I’ve been reformatting my Waterton’s Park booklet and this detail of three figures is the final illustration. Could this be a photograph of the camera-shy Waterton? Taken around 1860, it may show his Charles Waterton’s son Edmund on the left, one of Waterton’s sisters in law, (so a Miss Edmondstone) and Waterton himself.
Dr Hobson and friend at the farm, Walton Hall, c.1860.
But looking at it again, it does look more like Waterton’s friend Dr Hobson, who had a series of photographs taken of Walton Park at the time. There’s the cane, as in the Hobson photograph, the top hat and light-coloured trousers and there’s even a hint of those Victorian whiskers around his face.
Hobson keeping Waterton talking while his photographer takes a photograph
Hobson himself says that this back view of Waterton was the nearest that he came to capturing Waterton on camera.
For World Women’s Day, two local heroes, Eliza and Helen Edmonstone, who did what they could in an attempt to preserve the legacy of their brother-in-law Charles Waterton: his museum and nature reserve at Walton Hall, near Wakefield.
Eliza (1807-1870) and her younger sister Helen (1813-1879) were of Scottish/Caribbean descent.
The margay was trained to hunt rats at Walton Hall. I’ve read that Waterton trained it to run with foxhounds.
According to a story that I heard via my tutor, Professor Bryan Robb, at the Royal College of Art, whose wife was related to Waterton, a tame crow (or possibly a raven?) once interrupted mass in the small chapel at Walton Hall, wandering in during the service and causing mayhem.
Charles Dickens consulted Waterton when researching the habits of Grip, the pet raven in Barnaby Rudge.
By the way, a credit to another of my tutors at the Royal College, Quentin Blake, who, amongst other things, did what he could to find me work on BBC television’s Jackanory and who tried to broaden my outlook by getting me to draw zoo animals in the way that Ted Hughes might see them. I now realise that I could have learnt a lot from him, so I’m currently taking another look at his work and trying to free up my pen and wash. When he’s adding wash, he never works exactly to the outline and in this drawing I tried hard to do that, but it’s difficult for me with my rather literal approach to illustration.
I’ve been thinking about how to bring this odd couple – traveller and conservationist Charles Waterton and his apeman creation, The Nondescript – to life for a short animation. I’d like to make people smile but also to be able feel that there is something that they can do about the state of the planet, even if it’s not on the scale of exploring the upper reaches of the Essequibo and establishing a full scale nature reserve, as Waterton did.
The lockdown and the restriction of a one hour a day exercise walk, starting from home, that we were all limited to (with certain notorious exceptions!) made Barbara and I realise how much we miss on our local patch in most years by dashing off to the coast or the hills at every opportunity. There was so much to see as spring unfolded during a spell of almost uninterrupted good weather on our regular walk to the upper reaches of Smithy Brook. And the garden – including our pocket-sized nature reserve – has never received so much love and attention.
With all that’s being going on, can a Georgian Squire have any message that is relevant to us? Well, yes, loads actually:
Black Lives Matter
‘Slavery can never be defended: he whose heart is not of iron can never wish to be able to defend it . . . he wishes in his soul that the traffic had been stifled at birth’
Charles Waterton, 1825
Charles Waterton married a woman of mixed race (Anne’s maternal grandma was Arawak) and he travelled with freed slaves on his ‘wanderings’. Waterton trained a freed slave, almost certainly John Edmonstone, in the art of taxidermy. In turn Edmonstone, then based at 37, Lothian Street, Edinburgh, taught young medical student Charles Darwin and, we believe, through telling him stories of his travels with Waterton, inspired Darwin to visit the rain forests himself.
So we might not have had Darwin’s theory of evolution if it hadn’t been for Waterton’s ability to educate and inspire. I believe that he can still inspire us today.
Covid-19
Waterton was part of the first team to successfully carry out a tracheotomy under anaesthetic, not only that, but he supplied the anaesthetic, curare, which he’d collected himself in Guyana. So you could argue that he played a small part in preparing the way for a treatment that during the current epidemic has saved thousands of lives.
My animation won’t go into any of the above connections but I think that it’s important to see Waterton as more than an amiable eccentric – even though that’s the character that I’m basically sticking to in the animation!
I hope that I can suggest that there’s a backstory to my character that is worth dipping into.
Here’s a story that I was told at a wedding reception in Thorpe on 4 September, 1982:
‘Graham Smithson and David Jones who were fishing at Walton Hall some ten years ago (so about 1972) found a log at the side of the lake. It was hollow and inside they found an old parchment and a diary. Yorkshire Television were doing a feature on Waterton at that time. They sent the material through the post and heard no more of it.’
From my pocket sketch/notebook, 1982
Graham was David’s best man at the wedding
An additional detail which I remember but didn’t add to the note is that the parchment referred to a land transaction. I have a vague idea that the documents might have been hidden in a compartment in an old tin, but I’m not sure on that one.
Owl house, c.1920, a photograph in the collection at Wakefield Museum, reproduced in Brian Edginton’s ‘Charles Waterton, A Biography’ and in my booklet on ‘Waterton’s Park’
What they’d found was probably one of Waterton’s bird habitat hollow trees. He had one enormous tree trunk moved to the lakeside and converted it into a combined nesting box and hide. Perhaps Waterton was in the habit of spending time there and for some reason kept a diary and a particular document there.
I’d love to know more. So, if you’ve been clearing out a cupboard at Yorkshire Television and you’ve come across an old notebook . . .
I’ve enjoyed the detective work involved in researching the scene in my comic strip biography in which we meet the Waterton family at home in Walton Hall. I’ve been unable to track down any portraits of Charles Waterton’s young sisters-in-law, the Miss Edmonstones, so photographs of their close relatives have been the next best thing but I’ve also found a clue from art history.
As I understand it, Eliza and Helen, were, like Waterton’s late wife Ann, half Scottish, half Arawak. Whether this is true or not, I can take Edmund, the only son of Waterton and Ann as my starting point for the Edmonstone look. In photographs, he has a broad face and tightly curled hair which I’ve also found in a photograph of a Josephine Waterton, who I assume is Edmund’s daughter.
St Catherine, detail from an etching by Maratta.
Ann Waterton died shortly after the birth of Edmund in April 1830. Charles later acquired a painting of St Catherine by Carlo Maratta (1625-1713) which he felt bore a close resemblance to Ann. I’m unable to track down this particular painting but Maratta’s models for St Catherine and the Virgin Mary do have a similar look to the photograph of Josephine.
The hair style and the full-sleeved dress in Maratta’s etching of St Catherine aren’t so different to the fashions of the early 1830s that I’m using in my illustration.
Charles Waterton’s seal on a letter dated 2 June 1855.
Although I’ve yet to discover a portrait photograph of Charles Waterton himself, there are contemporary sketches, a bust and a portrait, plus a death mask which I have yet to arrange to see.
Links; An icon in York Art Gallery, Virgin with a Breast on her Neck appears to have links with Edmund. He liked to style himself ‘Lord of Walton Hall’ and he collected rings so I think that the flamboyant seal on the back of the York painting must be Edmund’s. Charles Waterton’s seal (left), was a simpler affair.
My reference for fashions from the Wonderful 1830s, from Whilhelmina’s Antique Fashion blog.
With so many drawings to do, it might seem counterproductive to lavish a few hours on the title for my comic strip, which I could have added in minutes in Photoshop or Manga Studio but it helps me establish the mood of the story. I’ll probably modify it later but this will suffice to set the scene.
The inspiration for the blocky lettering comes from the Channel 4 series Amazing Spaces Shed of the Year. Their freehand, cross-hatched logo suggests the blockiness of a shed and its homespun design. I’m going for a Victorian feel in my illustrations, so why shouldn’t I try cross-hatching my lettering.
Waterton campaigning against the enclosure of Heath Common, January 1844.
I was also thinking about the posters that Waterton had printed for his campaign to save the last open spaces available to the people of Wakefield.
The starting point for my title was a typeface called Superclarendon Bold, which I’ve squared up as a visual metaphor for the wall that Waterton built around his nature reserve in a heroic attempt to save it from poachers and pollution.
Waterton’s signature from a letter dated 1859 (see below).
We’ve discussed using a font or handlettering based on Charles Waterton’s handwriting throughout the comic but I think that would give the story an elegant period flavour, introducing a hint of Jane Austen. I’m aiming at something more robust and chunky.
Like so many of us from the West Riding of Yorkshire, Waterton liked to spend his holidays at Scarborough.
Thanks to various disruptions, I’m taking a while to get to the end of my battle with the poachers page but here we as the poacher runs off and Waterton warns him ‘You will NOT touch the birds in MY park!’
Needless to say, the poacher protests that this is a waste because it’s great game.
Working from my rough I tried having Squire Waterton in the foreground but it’s awkward to have him looking into the picture and to see the expression on his face. Why not, I thought, try and convey the Squire’s resolute mood in his body language?
At first I tried having him springing into action but this threw him off balance. In fact he looks like John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever!
How about having him stand his ground. I thought of boxers at a weigh in, trying to look rock solid.
I’m not happy with my first attempts at shading for this night scene but we’ll have to see what it looks like when I add the watercolour. Once again, it’s the lively little sketch of the standing figure that appeals to me more than the laboured shaded version.
I might end up using watercolour only rather than inked and hatched shadows.
I’ve been looking forward to seeing this drawing in colour. It looks rather stagey but it tells the story clearly, so I’ll stick with this version.
This is the first time that I’ve added a curved tail to a speech balloon. In Manga Studio EX5 this kind of tail is known as a spline. Mathematically, a spline curve is one that moves through a given series of points. Because of lack of headroom in this frame, a straight tail would have to emerge from the side of the balloon, which would look rather awkward.
No wonder Simpson looks so pleased with himself, he’s the first character to get a spline bubble in this comic strip. I don’t blame Waterton for storming off indignantly.
I’ve left the background muted because I can easily add more colour if it’s needed but, as it’s transparent watercolour, I can’t remove it if I overdo it.
At last, I’m getting started on the final artwork for the Charles Waterton comic strip project. I’m starting with the confrontation between Waterton and Mr Simpson the soap manufacturer, whose factory in Walton village has polluted air and stream and killed trees in the Waterton’s park.
Did the soap works look anything like the scene I imagined in my rough? I’ve been unable to track down a photograph of the factory as it was, so using a map in Peter Wright’s 1985 book A History of Walton I made a 3D model in Sketchup.
The factory was built on a triangle of land between the Barnsley Canal and Shay Lane. Shay Lane runs eastwards out of the village towards Crofton. I tried to use the satellite image from Google Earth as my starting point but that got a bit fiddly as I’m not familiar with the program so I started with a blank and drew out the buildings on the ground plane by eye, then I extruded them up into 3D objects using the Push Pull Tool.
With the two chimneys this isn’t so very different to the scene I conjured up from imagination but it’s not quite what I need for the showdown scene, so I’ll take the essential features from it and bring them together to make it a bit more dramatic.
A photograph taken after the factory closed shows that the canal ran past the soap works on an embankment, so the barges were passing by at roof level.
It’s unusual for me to work in pencil but it’s the quickest way to produce so many drawings. I abandoned the tonal conte crayon shading after the first couple of frames. The Faber Castell eraser doubles as a cap for the HB pencil and proved useful, as it’s so much quicker than diving into the drawer for my regular eraser.
I recently read Guiseppe Cristiano’s Storyboard Design Course, so I’m keen to organise my ideas for my latest freelance job, a comic strip, in storyboard form. My work usually starts with a drawing in a sketchbook, or with days, weeks, months, sometimes years of research but I’ve got a midsummer deadline to work to for this job, so that isn’t an option. The starting point here has to be a story that works.
John Whitaker, curator at Wakefield Museums, is providing the script for this 36 page comic strip to mark the 150th anniversary of traveller and naturalist Charles Waterton. I’m working on Part 3, The Defence of Natural History which tells the story of the nature reserve that Waterton set up at Walton Park, near Wakefield, when his exploring came to an end in the 1830s.
I’ve split John’s initial outline for the story into 33 frames. After a dramatic opening in which Waterton fights hand to hand with poachers, there’s a tour of the nature reserve. This doesn’t give me much of a chance for storytelling. Waterton simply takes us around his park like a presenter on Countryfile.
We might try introducing a character being taken on a tour of the estate just to create a bit of dialogue and tension. Charles Darwin was a visitor who admired Waterton but could also be rather scathing of Waterton’s views and eccentricities. Another possibility is that Waterton’s son Edmund could be the one being dragged around the estate. Edmund was, like so many children, a polar opposite to his father.
In The Storyboard Design Course, one of the artists says that he never starts his storyboard at frame one. He’d rather go straight in to the confrontation with the villain of the piece. In my case that’s ‘Soapy’ Simpson, whose factory polluted the stream in Waterton’s park and killed the trees in his heronry.
I found myself snarling as I drew Simpson and thinking of the kind of confrontation that Clint Eastwood has with a smug but dangerous villain – Lee Van Cleef rather than Eli Wallach – in the Fistful of Dollars trilogy.
The other scene that comes alive for me is the one of Waterton’s sisters-in-law, the Miss Edmonstones being racially abused in Wakefield. They were Arawak on their mother’s side, Scottish on their father’s so you feel that at that time they must have appeared quite exotic in the old market town. But so far we’ve got no definite evidence that this actually happened, just the odd hint that John Whitaker is following up with some additional research.
I’d like to feature the Miss Edmonstones as a contrast to the all-action adventures of Waterton. There’s often a woman (or in one case ‘the Woman’) in a Sherlock Holmes story to provide a contrast to the male world of Holmes and Watson.
Here’s a Waterton comic strip that I produced in the 1980s for a Wakefield Naturalist’s Society display at the Wakefield Flower Show.
Link;The Storyboard Design Course; The Ultimate Guide for Artists, Directors, Producers and Scriptwriters by Guiseppe Cristiano, published by Thames & Hudson
The other scene that comes alive for me is the one of Waterton’s sisters-in-law, the Miss Edmonstones being racially abused in Wakefield. They were Arawak on their mother’s side, Scottish on their father’s so you feel that at that time they must have appeared quite exotic in the old market town. But so far we’ve got no definite evidence that this actually happened, just the odd hint that John Whitaker is following up with some additional research.