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Leonard
Joseph Weisgard
December 13, 1916 - January 14, 2000
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| Leonard Weisgard, Caldecott award-winning
illustrator of more than 200 children’s books was perhaps best known for his
collaboration with the author Margaret Wise Brown. |
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Weisgard was born in New Haven, Connecticut but
spent much of his early childhood in England, where his father originally came from. His
interest in the quality of children’s books began after his family moved back to the
USA when he was 8. As a schoolboy in New York, he was dissatisfied with the books supplied
by the public schools he attended. He found the illustrations monotonous and thought that
the world could not be all that dreary and limited to only one color. |
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| Leonard (right) with his father Samuel |
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He went on to study art at the Pratt Institute
and the New School for Social Research, where he was influenced by primitive cave
paintings, Gothic and Renaissance art and avant-garde French illustrators of
children’s books of the 1920s.
He used a wide range of colors and media in his books, including gouache, poster paint,
crayon, chalk, decoupage, stenciling and pen and ink.
Leonard Weisgard also studied dance with Martha Graham and worked in the field of window
display. He began his career making illustrations for magazines such as Good
Housekeeping, The New Yorker and Harper’s Bazaar.
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| Leonard with Nora Edmunds of UNICEF with reproductions
of Greeting Cards. |
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| His first book, Suki, the Siamese Pussy, was
published in 1937, followed by an adaptation of Cinderella. |
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In 1939 the first of more
than two dozen collaborations with Margaret Wise Brown was published, The Noisy Book.
Their 1947 book, The Little Island,which Brown wrote under the pseudonym Golden
MacDonald, won the Caldecott Medal for best-illustrated
children’s book. |
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Leonard Weisgard |
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Weisgard also collaborated with other children’s book writers and wrote books he
illustrated himself, sometimes under the pseudonym “Adam Green". |
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Leonard Weisgard married Phyllis Monnot in 1951 and they had three
children, Abigail (1952), Christina (1954) and Ethan (1957).
Leonard and Phyllis often worked together creating set and costume designs with Leonard
sketching and Phyllis making patterns so the designs could become a reality. He designed
the stage sets and costumes for several productions of the San Francisco Ballet, including
The Dryad and The Nutcracker.
During the years he lived in Roxbury, Connecticut, Weisgard was deeply involved with
children's education. He lectured extensively and worked closely with The American Library
Association. |
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| Photo: Karsten Damstedt Jørgensen |
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| Leonard's studio in Glumsoe, Denmark
designed by his son-in-law Architect Per Boelskifte. |
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| Leonard Weisgard moved to Denmark with his wife and children
in 1969 where he lived for the rest of his life. His children and grandchildren - Ethan
and Midoriko's son Yuji (1989) and daughter Nanami (1987) - all live in Copenhagen. "Books,
he once said in an interview, have always, for as long as I can recall, been a source of
real magic in this wildly confusing world."
(Sources: The LA Times from the 24th of January, 2000 and The New York Times the 27th of
January, 2000)
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| Photo: Karsten Damstedt Jørgensen |
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| Leonard and Phyllis Weisgard's home in Denmark |
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