Pauline Baynes

Pauline Diana Baynes was born on September 9, 1922 in Hove, East Sussex. Her earliest memories were of her childhood in India, where her father was with the Indian Civil Service as a commissioner at Agra. Summers were spent at the hill station of Mussoorie in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand, the sights and sounds of which Pauline could still vividly recall 80 years later.

It was through a fellow worker, Powell Perry, who belonged to a family firm that printed children's picture books, that Baynes got her first commission, illustrating a book entitled Question Mark.

Baynes would later illustrate many authentic medieval stories, all of which show her painstaking research into the detailing of period costume and architecture, and her passion for recreating the texture and fabric of daily life in different ages. Her greatest triumph in this genre were her almost 600 illustrations embellishing the margins of Grant Uden's A Dictionary of Chivalry (1968), a two-year labour that deservedly earned her the coveted Kate Greenaway Medal.

Tolkien's Farmer Giles was the beginning of a long friendship and repeated collaboration between author and artist with Baynes decorating Tolkien's subsequent books The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Smith of Wootton Major and, posthumously, Leaf by Niggle and Bilbo's Last Song.

It was Baynes' collaboration with Tolkien that led to her subsequent association with the septet of children's novels written by Tolkien's friend C.S. Lewis and published annually between 1950 and 1956: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Prince Caspian, The Voyage of the 'Dawn Treader', The Silver Chair, The Horse and His Boy, The Magician's Nephew and The Last Battle.

Baynes returned to these stories several times, creating memorable cover designs for the Puffin paperbacks; producing new colour illustrations for The Land of Narnia (1989), a large-format edition of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1991) and, three years later, A Book of Narnians. Then, in 1998, she subtly water-coloured all the original line illustrations in all seven volumes to meet the demands of a generation no longer content with black-and-white pictures.

"Met C.S. Lewis. Came home. Made rock cakes." That's how Baynes's diary recorded one of only two meetings she ever had with the author whose work she so memorably pictured and with whom she is now inextricably linked. The relationship between author and artist was cordial and professional but without the depth of respect and affection existing between Baynes and Tolkien. For readers of the books, however, the pictures were, and have remained, an integral part of the whole culture of Narnia not even displaced by the big-screen dazzlements of the recent movie versions.

In 1961, Baynes met Fritz Gasch, a German ex-prisoner of war who was working locally as a dog's-meat man. A whirlwind courtship led to their marriage. They were a close couple and Fritz became especially friendly with Tolkien and Shepard, with whom he traded war memories. Fritz's sudden death, in 1988, left Baynes bereft but she poured her energies into her work and produced some of her most accomplished pieces.

She continued to work every day at a desk positioned beneath a window that looked out over the garden her husband had created for her, and in which his ashes were scattered. The desk would be strewn with half-empty gouache tubes and rows of well-worn pens and brushes; Handel's music would be playing in the background; and Pauline Baynes's dogs, including her 3rd rottweiler (all were named Bertha!) would be lying at her feet.

Pauline died in August 2008, still working on projects, including a highly decorative version of the Koran. She was also half-way through a very colourful Aesop's Fables. She remains one of the most influential illustrators of the twentieth century.
(from the author's website)