Garth Williams - Career

Career

In the United States Williams worked making lenses at a war plant, applied for work as a camouflage artist, contributed war-effort posters to the British-American Art Center in New York, and brought his portfolio around to the major publishing houses. He drew for The New Yorker for a mutually unfulfilling period of time. Then, in 1945, he received his first commission as an illustrator, from editor Ursula Nordstrom of Harper's Department of Books for Boys and Girls. The story is that Nordstrom "told him she was expecting a manuscript that he might illustrate. In a fortuitous coincidence, when the manuscript arrived the author had pinned a note to it: 'Try Garth Williams.' The author was E. B. White, the book was Stuart Little." The Whites had wanted Robert Lawson and had burned through eight illustrators. The book was a success with adults as well as children. Williams said later that seeing grownups on buses and trains reading Stuart Little persuaded him to continue as a freelance illustrator.

Shortly thereafter he began his collaboration with Margaret Wise Brown with the womblike The Little Fur Family, Harper's chic answer to Simon & Schuster's Pat the Bunny. Nordstrom knew the book would be a success when a mother wrote to tell her that her little boy had held open his copy at the dinner table and tried to feed it his supper. In all, Williams illustrated eleven of Brown's books.

In 1951 he illustrated Charlotte's Web (1952); his eldest child Fiona, a toddler when the family escaped the Blitz, was his model for Fern Arable.

In the latter part of his life he lived primarily in Marfil, a small town west of Guanajuato, Mexico. He was part of a colony of expatriates who built or rebuilt homes in the ruins of the silver mines of colonial Mexico. His studio was the center of the house, with five drawing tables and sixteen skylights, though the house also contained a waterfall. He was an excellent guitarist and occasional banjo player, and told stories of busking in London during his art school tenure. At 81, he estimated he had illustrated ninety-seven books.

At 84 he died at his home in Marfil. He is buried in Aspen, Colorado. He was married four different times throughout his life and had five daughters: Fiona and Bettina from his first marriage, Jessica and Estyn from his second, Dilys from his fourth and a son, Dylan from his third marriage.