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Description: A retrospective look at the sketches, cartoons and illustrations from the theatre designer and artist on the centenary of his birth.
Phone: 0207563 9500
Website: www.wallacecollection.org
Email: visiting@wallacecollection.org
Trains: Tube: Bond Street/Baker St/Oxford Circus 
Extra info: Food
Attention to detail: Osbert Lancaster’s minutely observed audience at Glyndebourne is on display at the Wallace Collection along with much of the best of his work
Topical note: Fares Shock, 1969: 'Isn’t it odd how every time we have a trade surplus everything goes up?'
Osbert Lancaster’s drawings were the visual equivalent of the poems of John Betjeman, his friend and occasional collaborator: jaunty, skilful, educated, offering simple pleasures, elegaic, carrying a sense of loss at the passing of an older version of England, a touch snobbish.
Except, where Betjeman could become syrupy and cloying, Lancaster never lost his wit or lightness of touch. Lancaster was blessed with wealth and a talent. He could draw, and he seems from an early age to have decided to enjoy the pleasures — a lively circle of friends, travel, nice clothes — this and his money brought.
He never suffered delusions that he was anything other than a brilliant illustrator. His style shows remarkably little development. From the 1930s, when he made his name with his histories of architecture, to the 1970s, when he was drawing pocket cartoons for the Daily Express about Watergate and Vietnam, there is the same clean, fluent line, the same ability to catch the character of a person or building, the same confident distribution of light and dark. He liked what he did and saw no reason to change it.
He loved buildings and like Betjeman chronicled and campaigned against what he saw as the despoliation of English towns, and the loss of country houses to bypasses and gravel pits. He did his bit in the war by lampooning Hitler but his is a world where nothing really bad ever seems to happen. His mockery is always gentle, his scenes of destruction mitigated by wit. Not even the Nazis seem that bad, just ridiculous. In this he was typical of a strand of English culture that survived the horrors of the 20th century by remaining cheerful throughout, and avoiding excessive challenges to either self or the status quo. It is limited perhaps but also beguiling. It is hard to go to the Wallace Collection’s exhibition of Lancaster and not be a little charmed, and a little cheered.
The exhibition is smallish but has laid its hands on the originals of almost all Lancaster’s best work, and gives a complete picture of him. It also does a service for a man in danger of slipping from memory. Once he represented his time, or an aspect of it. Now, with his fascination with aristocracy, he seems more distant but remains a source of innocent delight.
Until 11 January 2009. Daily 10am-5pm. Free. Information: 020 7563 9500; www.wallacecollection.org
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
