Baron Munchausen and the Original Brian Robb

This blog is partial to a bit of Baron Munchausen. A previous post dealt with a rather lovely old edition illustrated by Bichard (so lovely, in fact, that it left the shop under the arm of a visiting London Dealer...). This recent arrival is a different, somewhat more modest edition, but the illustrations are equally wonderful in their own way.

They're by Brian Robb, who had an illustrious (sorry) career working on posters and adverts for London Transport and Shell, cartoons for Punch, and book covers and illustrations. He taught at Chelsea Art College (where he became a mentor to Quentin Blake), and ended up as head of illustration at the Royal College of Art. He died in 1979. A class act then.

The coolest part of his cv though is his role in Operation Bertram. He held the brilliant title of Creative Camouflage Officer in the Western Desert of Africa during WW2, helping to deceive Rommel as to the location and size of the allied forces in the run up to El Alamein by camouflaging the eighth army's preparations in the North, and creating a complete dummy force to confuse the aerial photographers in the South. He was a (word of the day alert!) 'Camoufleur' par excellence.

He's referred to in the title of this post as the 'Original' Brian Robb to differentiate him from the current Brian (J.) Robb, the noted writer, who, when he's not popping up on Withnail Books' Facebook page, can be found here critiquing the work of Charlie Chaplin film by film (exactly 100 years after their release), reviewing the latest in sci-fi, fantasy and horror entertainment here, and in your local bookshop as author of acclaimed books about Tolkien, Steampunk and Philip K. Dick to name but a few.

Anyway, here's a selection of the Original Brian's Baron...

Waistcoat Anecdotes and a Trip to the Moon: Baron Munchausen, Illustrated by Bichard, Warne, c1878

There are countless editions of The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, illustrated by an equally innumerable crowd of artists (what is the collective noun for artists?), but this is surely one of the most attractive. There's no date printed inside, but the copy which has recently arrived at Withnail Books has a gift inscription from Christmas Day 1878. While it's not in absolutely mint condition, it would still make a pretty wonderful present 135 Christmasses later...

The 18 illustrations by Alphonse Adolf Bichard are fairly ubiquitous online (you can buy prints of them from the various 'it's out of copyright so we'll do what we like with it' art companies) but it's quite something to see them as they were originally presented, with colour printing which must have been top-flight, state-of-the-art stuff in its day. The photos below can't really do them justice, plus this is a big book, c13 inches x 9 1/2 inches.

Here's betting Terry Gilliam owns a copy of this edition: there's a lot in Bichard's art which appears to have influenced his ill-fated movie version. I really must watch it again. The first time I saw it, the projectionist missed out a whole reel, and I'm pretty sure mixed up the order of the others. That not many people in the audience noticed says something about the dreamlike nature of the film, and indeed the original tales.