Vintage Dinosaur Art – Prehistoric Animals (Macdonald First Library)

Bernard Robinson is an artist whose work I’ve always been happy to stumble upon, ever since I first reviewed the Ladybird book Dinosaurs back in 2011 (can you believe I’ve been writing this twaddle for over 15 years? Me neither). He was extremely skilled at placing tangible-looking, highly detailed and very scaly dinosaurs in lush, evocative settings, and both the quality of his work and its obviously retro nature (by post-Dino Renaissance standards) make it hugely nostalgic for many. Yes, even me, in spite of the fact that it looked rather dated to my 5-year-old self in 1993, and I was a little sniffy about that sort of thing.

When first thumbing through Prehistoric Animals (part of the Macdonald First Library series), I assumed it was a knock-off of the Ladybird book; it’s structured in a similar way, and many of the dinosaurs had a similar, Robinsonian appearance, except they sported numerous strange inaccuracies. There’s only one problem with that theory – the Ladybird book was first published in 1974, whereas Prehistoric Animals was first published in 1970, with this edition arriving in 1973. Furthermore, although the illustrators aren’t credited, closer inspection revealed a familiar signature alongside the giant theropods that are over-endowed in the manual digit department.

Such a theropod appears on the cover, which certainly caught my attention on eBay, even if the rest of the cover is rather unexciting. Apart from the somewhat Neave Parker-ish, somewhat Arthur Hayward-ish (the tail) carnivorous theropod with four forward-facing, weight-bearing toes per foot and four grabby little fingers per hand, we’re treated to a pterosaur, a trilobite, and perhaps the most demure Dimetrodon ever seen. Notably, the latter even has LIPS! Sphenacodontid saints be praised – I really don’t understand the trend of giving Dimetrodon a croco-face. As the illustrations aren’t credited, it’s hard to say who exactly produced each of these, but the theropod has a very Robinsonian look.

The book’s endpapers feature simplified depictions of “prehistoric animals compared in size with a man,” although the scale is a little off; in particular, Dimetrodon is absolutely gigantic. Tyrannosaurus has three fingers per hand here, thus ensuring that not a single illustration in this book is accurate in that respect (two-fingered tyrannosaurid arms had been known about for decades by this time). All that said, I mostly just wanted to include this page in case Lawrence Denman happens to drop by. Sounds unlikely, but hey, it’s happened before!

Much as in the Ladybird book, Prehistoric Animals walks us through the history of life (animal life, that is – who cares about plants, anyway?) in chronological order. As such, we’re treated to some Palaeozoic beasties before we reach the dinosaurian good stuff, including the above Dimetrodon. It reminded me a lot of Robinson’s as featured in the Ladybird book, but of course, this is older. The illustrator was apparently “P. Lenander”, although unfortunately I can’t find any information about them whatsoever (any information you might have is greatly appreciated). This Dimetrodon is a rather chubby-looking beast, what with its pudgy limbs and the impression of concentric rings on the body, but I’m still a fan. It’s very active and spry for the period, adopting a more upright posture to chase down a lizardy-looking thing in a crocodile stylee. Its head is also well-observed and would appear, again, to have lips.

I must admit, I did wonder if Lenander and Robinson were both copying the same source that I haven’t yet seen…

Onwards to the Mesozoic, and to a pair of extremely of-their-time dinosaurs as illustrated by Robinson. The Brontosaurus has a ‘generic sauropod’ appearance, what with its flexi-hose neck and all, and is naturally described as a water-dweller. This leads to Robinson illustrating it with a ‘tide mark’ halfway up its torso, which is a very endearing touch. Stego, meanwhile, is your standard bobbly-skinned humpbacked grumpy guy who hasn’t changed much since the days of Othniel Marsh. The book’s unnamed author notably describes its plates as “bony flaps”, which doesn’t really make a lot of sense and might be a case of the simplification of language for the kiddies being taken too far.

Now here’s what we’ve all been waiting for – the book’s very unusual take on Tyrannosaurus! Actually, it closely resembles the creature on the cover, but this action-packed piece is far more visually arresting. Perhaps the most entertaining aspect of this piece is the look of sheer sadistic joy on the tyrannosaur’s face as it prepares to chow down on an unfortunate little…something. (Thescelosaurus? An overweight ornithomimosaur? I dunno.) That, and its brandishing four-fingered hands seemingly equipped with opposable thumbs(!) perched on oddly humanoid arms, give it the air of a corpulent fellow reaching for a box of doughnuts.

Where the doubled-digit hands and oversized first toes came from is a bit of a mystery, as this reconstruction otherwise seems to owe a lot to the work of sculptor Arthur Hayward, with the scales on the tail being especially Hayward-like. (If you’ve seen the 1969 movie The Valley of Gwangi, the Invicta Tyrannosaurus model, or any of a number of similar models he produced, you’ll know what I mean.) However, Hayward never made such errors in his work. It may be that Robinson just decided to embellish the animal a little bit for the sake of making an entertaining illustration – call it artistic licence. It’s still beautifully painted and, ironically, the huge thigh muscles of this beast make it more forward-thinking, in some ways, than Robinson’s later illustrations of the animal in which it tended to have rather weedy, under-muscled limbs.

One last thing: I posted this piece over on Facebook earlier this week, and Mette Aumala pointed out the “very interesting painted motion blur effect in the feet”. Which is, indeed, very interesting. Well spotted.

More Arthur Hayward influence is evident in the above Triceratops, which is based quite directly on one of Hayward’s models. However, it differs in seemingly having keratinised, hardened skin covering much of its face, as well as a beak. It’s an interesting touch that makes it appear to be a rather weathered, aged individual, an impression aided by its melting hind limb. It’s a grumpy grampa Triceratops.

In addition to the dinosaurs, Robinson provides illustrations of some of the expected otherprehistoricanimals, including Pteranodon and a plesiosaur, as seen above. The Pteranodon is quite typical of the period, even if it seems oddly lacking in the propatagium department. The plesiosaur, labelled Plesiosaurus, is rather an odd one – there’s a bit of foreshortening going on, but it looks as if its neck is genuinely fairly short. It could be that it’s actually based on a plesiosaur that isn’t Plesiosaurus (or, has since been split from Plesiosaurus), although that wouldn’t explain the bizarrely long tail. (Insert cartoon of Othniel Marsh grinning evilly and Edward Cope looking aghast.)  There was obviously a lack of readily available reference material in the 1970s, but the animal’s body and fins seem to draw upon actual specimens; they aren’t just pulled out of the artist’s, er, imagination.

Regardless, that spotted skin pattern is very lovely, as is the beautifully painted murky ocean, and the anonymous background ichthyosaurs are rather sweet. Thanks to the soft tissue outlines of ichthyosaurs being known for such a long time, they’ve aged well.

Sadly, Robinson wasn’t employed to illustrate the Archaeopteryx for this book – his depictions of the animal are uniformly excellent and have aged far better than his paintings of its more scaly cousins. Instead, the Archaeopteryx here comes courtesy of another uncredited artist whose initials appear to be ‘PAL’. I have no idea who they are, though, which is very frustrating. In any case, it’s a very familiar-looking Archaeopteryx in standard ‘wings akimbo’ pose and a gloriously radiant ‘Autumn leaf’ colour scheme. I’ll freely admit that I’m mostly quite in love with the tree branch in this illustration, which is clearly intended to be unobtrusive (‘cos the point of this piece is to show off the animal) but manages to be altogether more elegant than it has any right to be. Hopefully the more artistically literate among you can back me up here.

And finally…back to Robinson, who couldn’t half produce a stunning-looking landscape or two alongside those strikingly solid-looking scaly saurians. This dramatic depiction of the early Earth, all violent storms and volcanic eruptions and soaring craggy cliffs with waterfalls cascading down, is absolutely fantastic. He’d go on to illustrate a very similar scene for the Ladybird book – perhaps Ladybird were impressed with this one (and rightly so). What a marvellous illustration, and what a talent – here’s to uncovering more of his work in the future!