ArticleCard.jpg

Reading lists

The classics we fell in love with, as chosen by our authors and readers

London Postcards

Over seventy years of quintessential London views in one box 
 
In 1950, aged 19, David Gentleman arrived in the capital, ready to begin his life as an artist. Over the next seven decades, he would sketch, paint, and engrave his way through London, documenting the cityscape, and shaping it, too - most notably through his iconic mural in Charing Cross Underground Station. 
 
Combining world-famous imagery with unexpected scenes of daily life in the city, this box of London artworks is a treasure trove for all those who flock to the capital. 
 
'David Gentleman is London's visual laureate' Quentin Blake

David Gentleman is London's visual laureate

David Gentleman is a painter and printmaker, working in many mediums. He has designed British postage stamps and coins, and the platform-length mural, blown up from his wood engravings, well-known to Londoners, at Charing Cross on the underground. His studio is at the top of an early Victorian house in Camden Town between the crowded, rackety Camden Lock and the green spaces of Regent's Park and Primrose Hill.

Over seventy years of quintessential London views in one box 
 
In 1950, aged 19, David Gentleman arrived in the capital, ready to begin his life as an artist. Over the next seven decades, he would sketch, paint, and engrave his way through London, documenting the cityscape, and shaping it, too - most notably through his iconic mural in Charing Cross Underground Station. 
 
Combining world-famous imagery with unexpected scenes of daily life in the city, this box of London artworks is a treasure trove for all those who flock to the capital. 
 
'David Gentleman is London's visual laureate' Quentin Blake

An Artist's Life in London

My Town

David Gentleman has lived in London for almost seventy years, most of it on the same street. This book is a record of a lifetime spent observing, drawing and getting to know the city, bringing together work from across his whole career, from his earliest sketches to watercolours painted just a few months ago. 
 
Here is London as it was, and as it is today: the Thames, Hampstead Heath; the streets, canals, markets and people of his home of Camden Town; and at the heart of it all, his studio and the tools of his work. Accompanied by reflections on the process of drawing and personal thoughts on the ever-changing city, this is a celebration of London, and the joy of noticing, looking and capturing the world. 
 
'David has spent a lifetime depicting with wit and affection a London he has made his own' Alan Bennett 
 
 'He delivers a poetry of exultant concentration ... The surface fusion of the sensuous and the sharply modern is echoed by Gentleman's imagery' Guardian 
 
 'The artist and illustrator has been responsible for some of the most-seen public artworks in this country' The Times 
 
 'Perhaps the last of the great polymath designer-painters' Camden New Journal

David Gentleman has lived in London for almost seventy years, most of it on the same street. This book is a record of a lifetime spent observing, drawing and getting to know the city, bringing together work from across his whole career, from his earliest sketches to watercolours painted just a few months ago. Here is London as it was, and as it is today: the Thames, Hampstead Heath; the streets, canals, markets and people of his home of Camden Town; and at the heart of it all, his studio and the tools of his work. Accompanied by reflections on the process of drawing and personal thoughts on the ever-changing city, this is a celebration of London, and the joy of noticing, looking and capturing the world.

David Gentleman is a painter and printmaker, working in many mediums. His work is held in many major galleries, including Tate, the V&amp;A and the British Museum. He has designed British postage stamps and coins, and the platform-length mural at Charing Cross on the underground. His studio is at the top of an early Victorian house in Camden Town between crowded, rackety Camden Lock and the green spaces of Regent's Park and Primrose Hill.

David Gentleman, an iconic British illustrator and designer, has lived a lifetime in London. Drawing from over sixty years of engagement with this most well-known capital city, My Town presents London as it was and as it is today. His beautiful and intricate work - of the Thames, Hampstead Heath, Camden Town (where David Gentleman has lived in the same house for fifty years), London's parks and sights - offers us the pleasure of looking again at the everyday. Accompanied by reflections on the work of an artist, commentary on the possibilities of ink, pen and paint and personal thoughts on the ever-changing city, this is a delight for all those who flock to London.

An Artist's Year

London, You're Beautiful

Iconic artist and long-time Londoner David Gentleman draws the hidden city every day, for a year 
 
David Gentleman has been drawing London all his adult life. But can you look afresh at the place where you live? He has immersed himself in his home city to try and find out. London, You're Beautiful, the resulting book of sketches, drawings and watercolours, arranged month by month, shows a year in the life of London, and reveals the city that is hidden in plain view. 
 
David's notes on his work offer us a privileged insight into how an artist sees and captures the ever-shifting light and colours, movement and figures of a teeming city as it moves through the seasons. He describes how he chooses techniques and materials to render the spellbound children at his grandchildren's Camden primary school; the spectacular transformation of Hendon's streets from brown to pink to green with April's cherry blossom; the strange world evoked by the city under snow. Through David's eyes we see London anew as he shows us how the sun turns rubbish-strewn ditches into enchanting waterside glades, or how just twenty-two lines on paper can deliver the dazzling complexity of Canary Wharf's windows. 
 
This book is for everyone who would like to understand how an artist works, for lovers of the city and for those who long to see a familiar world, transformed.

Exquisite and original as always, David Gentleman gives us delights and surprises on every page

So many of David Gentleman's drawings are for me familiar territory. I've lived in three of the locations he pictures and even have my hair cut in his barber's. David has spent a lifetime depicting with wit and affection a London he has made his own, in this book looking at some of its neglected corners. So London, You're Beautiful is a tribute which, if I can't quite endorse, it's only because beauty often brings with it exasperation. So for me (and I suspect for him) it's London, You're Beautiful -- so how about taking a bit more care of yourself?

He delivers a poetry of exultant concentration...Gentleman is an artist-designer who has worked across an exceptionally wide range of formats

Well-known for his captivating illustrations...a highly talented artist

Perhaps the last of the great polymath designer / painters

Selected as a Guardian Literary Event of 2012

David Gentleman has been drawing London all his adult life, and for the past year has spent his days focused on looking afresh at the city. The resulting book of sketches, drawings and watercolours, arranged month by month, shows a year in the life of London and reveals the city that is hidden in plain view. From its surprising expanse of sky to the crushed closeness of the tube, from Rainham Marshes to Hampstead Heath, David Gentleman gives us London on a human scale. Accompanied by his thoughts on looking and drawing, whether it is what catches his eye in a certain square or selecting the media - pencil, pen and ink, watercolour - best suited to capture each of the city's various aspects, as well as his reflections on the place he has lived in for over sixty years, this is a book for all those inspired by London, art and design. 
 
David Gentleman is a watercolourist and printmaker, working in many media and scales. He has designed British stamps and coins and the platform-length mural at Charing Cross tube station, well-known to Londoners, that is blown up from his wood engravings. His studio is at the top of an early Victorian house in Camden Town between the crowded, rackety Camden Lock and the green spaces of Regent's Park and Primrose Hill.

David Gentleman

Lessons for Young Artists is anything but a how-to manual or didactic textbook. Instead, it’s like a visit to David Gentleman’s studio where you sit at his shoulder, watching him work, while he shares tips, wisdom, anecdotes … Finding beauty in the neglected, unnoticed moments that pass us by is a lesson that can be applied to anyone’s life, ‘Young Artist’ or not. This is diamond advice, lightly given

Gentleman distils more than seven packed decades into an inspiring primer for the hobbyist and art school graduate alike

A richly wise book about how to live a creative life in a world full of distractions and false goals … the book could equally be called Advice for Living Well

A wonderful guide to practising art … Gentleman’s advice is simple and doable … The lessons are brought home with his own work. Some of his rules could be for life as well as for art

Charming … a distillation of some of the wisdom gained during a near 80-year career

Gentleman has been responsible for some of the most-seen public artworks in this country, from more than 100 commissioned stamp designs, through the illlustrations in the astonishingly popular 1957 cookery book Plays du Jour, to a platform-length mural at Charing Cross Underground Station (passed through bya whopping 60,000 passengers a day)

It takes a special kind of person to hit their 10th decade and still see fresh beauty in the city they’ve called home for 70 years

Gentleman, more than anyone else, was responsible for demonstrating the possibilities of the postage stamp, a tiny shard of visual pleasure and interest that could make art a natural accompaniment to the everyday act of communication for millions of people

It would be tempting to describe Gentleman as a pillar of the British establishment were it not for his anti-establishment leanings … For decades he has been working steadily as a designer-illustrator in a tradition of his own making

David Gentleman is London's visual laureate

David has spent a lifetime depicting with wit and affection a London he has made his own

We are all artists as children, painting and drawing each day. Most of us stop when we get older – but David Gentleman kept going. For over ninety years he has been drawing, painting, engraving and printing, rising to become one of Britain’s best-known and most loved artists. His watercolours have filled galleries; his iconic wood cuts are emblazoned across posters, book jackets and train stations; his stamps have made their way to the furthest corners of the world. 
 
Here, the great, polymathic artist and craftsman shares what he has learned over the course of a lifetime of making and thinking about art. Unlike his contemporaries, Gentleman was never a teacher; his lessons are a sequence of unconventional prompts and reflections that will deepen how you think about art and the world around you. 
 
 
Sincere, practical and unpretentious, Gentleman’s insights are a breath of fresh air. Here are new ways to focus, notice the world and cultivate your own style; techniques to evolve your work, from playing with time to painting in bad weather; methods for getting the most out of mistakes and negative criticism; and, above all, reminders to return, always, to the simple delights of creativity.

David Gentleman

Praise for Lessons for Young Artists

Lessons for Young Artists is anything but a how-to manual or didactic textbook. Instead, it’s like a visit to David Gentleman’s studio where you sit at his shoulder, watching him work, while he shares tips ...

Gentleman distils more than seven packed decades into an inspiring primer for the hobbyist and art school graduate alike

A richly wise book about how to live a creative life in a world full of distractions and false goals … the book could equally be called Advice for Living Well

Lessons for Young Artists is anything but a how-to manual or didactic textbook. Instead, it’s like a visit to David Gentleman’s studio where you sit at his shoulder, watching him work, while he shares tips ...

Gentleman distils more than seven packed decades into an inspiring primer for the hobbyist and art school graduate alike

A richly wise book about how to live a creative life in a world full of distractions and false goals … the book could equally be called Advice for Living Well

Lessons for Young Artists is anything but a how-to manual or didactic textbook. Instead, it’s like a visit to David Gentleman’s studio where you sit at his shoulder, watching him work, while he shares tips ...

Gentleman distils more than seven packed decades into an inspiring primer for the hobbyist and art school graduate alike

A richly wise book about how to live a creative life in a world full of distractions and false goals … the book could equally be called Advice for Living Well

Books by David Gentleman

Articles featuring David Gentleman

The classics we fell in love with, as chosen by our authors and readers

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter