Laurence Anholt has written everything from baby board books to adult crime. But the jewel in his vast bibliography must surely be Small Stories of Great Artists, a series of children’s picture books about some of the world’s most famous artists, each told through the eyes of a child who really knew them. It’s now 30 years since Anholt began the series, and this birthday edition contains all eight of the original stories, whose subjects range from Leonardo da Vinci to Frida Kahlo to Pablo Picasso.
The first chapter is about Vincent Van Gogh, and is told through the eyes of Camille Roulin, the son of the postman in Arles, where the artist arrived in 1888 with “no money and no friends”. “Where Camille lived, the sunflowers grew so high they looked like real suns – a whole field of burning yellow suns,” Anholt writes, capturing the image in one of his bucolic watercolour illustrations. Camille and his father befriend the artist, but others in Arles are less welcoming (“It’s time he got a real job… instead of playing with paints all day”); and it’s Camille’s quiet, childish faith in Van Gogh’s work that becomes the story’s central narrative. The chapter concludes by gently enforcing the story’s moral: “Vincent only sold one painting, but he kept working every day. Would YOU follow your dream if no one believed in you?”
In the story Degas and the Little Dancer, the heroine is Marie, an impoverished young ballet student in Paris who is chosen to pose for the curmudgeonly artist. While other dancers laugh at Degas, Marie looks on him more kindly, and finds herself immortalised in his famous statue, The Little Dancer of Fourteen Years. Then there’s Leonardo and the Flying Boy, where Zoro, an apprentice in Leonardo da Vinci’s studio, is mesmerised by the artist’s famous flying machine. “Zoro couldn’t believe his eyes! An extraordinary machine filled the room. Its wings were like a great eagle.” But, as with Camille and Van Gogh, even when Zoro’s test flight off a nearby mountain top ends in disaster, he never loses faith in his master. “One day people will fly… anything is possible.”
The series is the product of years of research, during which Anholt gained access to private archives and befriended one of Picasso’s former muses. But each story is only a few hundred words long, and focuses on a single, personal narrative, rather than exhausting the reader with background and events. Shops nowadays are full of children’s books about artists. But it is the combination of Anholt’s lyrical artwork and his evocative, intimate stories that makes this one such a treasure.
Small Stories of Great Artists is published by Taschen at £30. To order your copy for £25, call 0330 173 0523 or visit Telegraph Books