Children freeing a caged bird
c 1925. Etching on cream wove paper, 4 1/2 x 7 inches (114 x 177 mm), wide margins, signed in pencil in the lower right. Laid down to nonarchival board with the mat affixed, obscuring the verso and the sheet edges. The visible portion of the sheet is clean with minor toning around the mat window opening. The signature is unobscured and clear.
Best known as the original illustrator of Enid Blyton's books, Eileen Soper was particularly fond of depicting children and animals. She was born in 1905, in Enfield, Middlesex, UK, and then moved at a very young age to Hertfordshire, where her father, artist George Soper, built a home the family called "Wildings." Wildings was complete with a wildlife sanctuary and sprawling gardens filled with life. Eileen sketched many of the animals living there, including deer, birds, and comical badgers. Showing exceptional talent, at thirteen she produced her first etching, and it was just three years later in 1918 that she was exhibited at the Royal Academy. Soper's charming compositions attracted immediate attention and from the age of just sixteen her future success in the world of illustration was cemented.
Childhood was to be Eileen Alice Soper’s lifelong theme. She captured the touching purity and joy of children at play in a way that has endured in a timeless manor. Soper produced more than 160 original etchings in the first ten years of her career, and at about the age of 26 she turned her full attention towards illustrating the well known children's books of Enid Blyton, including Noddy, the Famous Five series, and the Secret Seven series.
Soper also wrote and illustrated her own children's book, and later in life she concentrated on writing and illustrating wildlife books. She was a founding member of the Society of Wildlife Artists (SWLA) and was elected a member of the Royal Society of Miniature Painters, Sculptors and Gravers (RMS) in 1972. Eileen Soper passed away in 1990 at Wildings, the childhood home in which she lived all 85 years of her life.
Item number: 1229
Price: $500.00
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