Berenice Myers appears fitfully in anthologies of illustration for children and in several recent blogs but she deserves better. She deserves a separate and serious study. Her invention and wit are special, her pacing of a story precise and pleasing. She had arrived in Paris in 1952 with her husband Lou, also an illustrator of books. She shares many stylistic and compositional features with Tom Eckersley but avoides his regular and uncritical big smiling expressions. Her characterisation of the central figure with his sagging trousers is sustained and beautifully drawn. Bless her. In the panoply. |