Shepard, Ernest Howard (1879-1976), was a British painter and illustrator. His illustrations for the “Winnie-the-Pooh” stories and poems by the British author A. A. Milne are particularly well known. He also illustrated several stories by the Scottish author Kenneth Grahame, including The Reluctant Dragon (1898) and The Wind in the Willows (1908), as well as books for older readers. He wrote and illustrated two autobiographies, Drawn from Memory (1957) and Drawn from Life (1961). Throughout his long career, Shepard illustrated more than 150 books.
The Art of Winnie-the-Pooh: How E. H. Shepard Illustrated an Icon (2017) by James Campbell collects more than 150 images that reveal the origin of Shepard’s illustrations for the Milne works. The collection also includes correspondence bertween the artist and the author that led to Pooh’s creation.
Shepard was born on Dec. 10, 1879, in London, England. Early in his career, he worked as a cartoonist for the magazine Punch. Shepard died on March 24, 1976. Mary Shepard, his daughter, was an illustrator and author. She was the original illustrator of the popular “Mary Poppins” children’s books written by the Australian-born author P. L. Travers.
