Children's book illustrator Gerald Rose, whose picture books with his wife, Elizabeth, and authors such as Ted Hughes are enjoyed worldwide, died May 5 at the age of 87. The Guardian reported that Rose was the youngest winner of the Kate Greenaway Medal for children's book illustration in 1960 for Old Winkle and the Seagulls (written by Elizabeth Rose), when he was in his mid-20s and barely out of art school. He would go on "to become an influential artist in the field of children's picture books. His painterly, playful and gently anarchic artwork continues to be enjoyed around the world."
Rose was born in Hong Kong, where "the exotic flora and fauna of his childhood would form a regular theme in his work, most directly in a highly emotive autobiographical work for Cambridge University Press, Tiger Dreams (1996)," the Guardian noted, adding that the "childhood idyll was brutally curtailed when the Japanese swept into Hong Kong, and by 1942 the family was broken up," with Gerald, his sister, and mother taken to an internment camp for civilians while his father was interned at a military camp. Upon their release, the children were sent to live in Lowestoft in England.
Eventually Rose enrolled in the Lowestoft College of Art, where he met Elizabeth Pretty, a fellow student. He received a scholarship to the Royal Academy Schools in 1955, and his wife joined him in London to work as a primary school teacher. In addition to his studies, he also took a keen interest in the children's books Elizabeth would bring home.
Gerald and Elizabeth Rose then began their collaboration, and their first book, How St. Francis Tamed the Wolf, was published in 1958. The following year brought a second book, Wuffles Goes to Town, along with the Greenaway Medal-winning Old Winkle and the Seagulls.
Rose also began teaching at Blackpool College of Art. In 1965, he was appointed to a teaching position at Maidstone College of Art, where he developed the highly successful BA illustration program, which he led until 1987.
Along with the books with his wife, Rose illustrated the work of many other authors, including Ted Hughes's Nessie the Mannerless Monster (1964), James Joyce's The Cat and the Devil (1965), Paul Jennings's The Hopping Basket (1965) and The Great Jelly of London (1967), Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky and Other Poems (1968), and a number of Norman Hunter's Professor Branestawm titles (1981-83). Rose's own later picture books included The Tiger Skin Rug (1979) and the award-winning Ahhh! Said Stork (1986).