Original Drawing titled "Lonesome"
This beautiful drawing, probably from the period when Gaze was serving in the First World War, shows a little boy at play. It is titled in pencil "Lonesome".
Born in New Zealand in 1885, a whimsical artist with outstanding talent, Harold Gaze is one of the more elusive Australasian children's writers and illustrators. We know little with exactitude about his life. After being rejected for active service, Gaze reputedly studied at various art schools in London for a period before publishing his first (recorded) book illustrations in New York in 1917: I Wish I Could Fly by Rose Strong Hubbell. At the close of World War I, Gaze moved to Melbourne and launched his career with The Wicked Winkapong in 1918. He exhibited at the Victorian Artists Society Annual Exhibition in May 1919 and over the next few years his work "established him as the most original illustrator of children's books after Ida Rentoul Outhwaite" (Holden).
In 1927, commercial publishing success in the United States led Gaze to settle in Pasadena where he continued his dual career as a munitions expert, either remaining here until his death in 1962 or returning to England in 1959 and settling in Hampstead for his final years, dying in 1963. Solo shows of his fantasy paintings in Los Angeles earned him the appellation of ‘The Bubble Man’. It is said that Gaze worked with the Disney studios on Fantasia. Work by Harold Gaze is held in the National Museum of American Illustration, the Pasadena Museum of History, and the San Diego Museum of Art, among others.
Original art by Harold Gaze is very scarce.
This item measures 260 mm x 360 mm, signed twice, mounted and framed.
Price (AUD): $8,500.00 other currencies