MARGARET TARRANT (1888-1959)

Margaret Tarrant was a prolific illustrator. During her fifty-year career, she created posters, greeting cards, calendars, postcards and book as well as oil paintings. She was most popular during the 1920’s and 1930’s and was known for her romantic depiction of children, fairies and animals.

Tarrant was born in Battersea, a suburb of south London in 1888. She was the only child of Percy Tarrant, the landscape painter, and his wife, Sarah Wyatt.

Percy was a successful illustrator of magazines as well as books and greeting cards. His work was very influential in her life and he her encouraged her to take up illustration. As a child, Tarrant would set up an ‘Exhibition Tent’ with sheets, pin up her art work and invite her parents inside for viewing.

Margaret's first training was in the art department of Clapham High School, where she won several awards for drawing. After graduating, she attended Clapham School of Art. She briefly trained as a teacher, but instead, became interested in watercolor painting and illustrating.

Tarrant began to work for publishers of Christmas cards at the age of eighteen and became a book illustrator at the age of twenty with the publication of Kingsley’s The Water Babies in 1908. The next year, she produced a series of paintings for postcards, published by C.W. Faulkner.

In 1910 she illustrated both Fairy Stories from Hans Christian Andersen and Charles Perrault's Contes. She exhibited at the Royal Academy and the Walker Royal Society of Artists.

After working for some time as an illustrator, she left work in 1918 to study at Heatherley’s School of Art, in London where she stayed until 1923. In 1935, she furthered her art education at Guildford School of Art where she became a life-long friend of fellow fairy artist, Molly Brent. She was also a good friend to fairy artist, Cecily Mary Barker.

During her long career, she worked for many publishers. In later years, she worked almost exclusively with the Medici Society. For them, she collaborated with Marion St John Webb on a popular series of Flower Fairy books in the 1920’s. Her color illustrations accompanied Webb's poems about unusual fairies such as insects and wild fruits. Altogether 13 little books, about 10 by 13 cm. (4 by 5 inches), were produced from 1917 to 1929.

During the 1920's and early 1930's, her religious paintings were very fashionable. The best known was The Prayeth Best which depicted a shepherd boy kneeling on a hilltop. In an effort to collect material for her work, the Medici Society sent her on a trip to Palestine in 1936.

Her most popular painting was called The Piper of Dreams.

By 1953, her health and eyesight were deteriorating. Within a few years, she gave up her house in Peaslake to live with her friend Molly Brett in Cornwall. She died on July 28,1959. She left her pictures to her friends and her estate to twelve charities.