H.J. Ford Collection
Our Arthur Rackham and H.J. Ford collections grew out of our desire to saturate the imaginative ground of our children with healthy stories and images to inspire wonder and delight for generations to come.
About H.J. Ford
Henry Justice Ford was born in 1860 near London, England. His father was a solicitor, and the family had a passion for the English game of cricket.
Ford was educated at Clare College, Cambridge, before devoting himself to study of the fine arts. He studied first at the Slade School of Fine Art under Alphonse Legros, a painter, sculptor, and key figure in the British “etching revival” in the late 1800s.
Ford then moved to the Bushey School of Art, where he studied painting, composition, and drawing under Hubert von Herkomer. Though his illustrations made him famous, Ford would continue to paint and etch throughout his career, and many times exhibited his landscapes, historical paintings and other imaginative works at the Royal Academy of Art and other London museums.
In 1889, Ford agreed to collaborate with other illustrators on the Andrew Lang “Coloured Fairy Book” series. By 1892, Ford was the lone remaining illustrator on the project, which would run to 12 volumes of fairy tales, and several other anthologies. By Lang’s death in 1912, Ford had contributed over 1,000 illustrations to Lang’s series, and he continued to work with Lang’s widow, Leonora, on several more collections of imaginative works.
In addition to gaining fame as an illustrator of Lang’s fairy tale volumes, Ford illustrated Charles Fletcher’s and Rudyard Kipling’s “A School History of England,” and an edition of Sir Walter Scott’s “Kenilworth.”
He had many interests and hobbies, and this ecclecticism allowed him the opportunity to form friendships with several well-known writers of his day, including P.G. Wodehouse and Arthur Conan Doyle. He also played cricket for a club owned by playwright and author J.M. Barrie.
He married a young widow in 1921, adopted a child in 1927, and lived a devoted family life until his death in 1941.
