Hilary Knight | |
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| Born | (1926-11-01)November 1, 1926 (age 99) |
| Education |
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| Occupation | Illustrator |
| Known for | Illustrator for the 1950s children's book seriesEloise |
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Hilary Knight (born November 1, 1926) is an American writer and artist. He is the illustrator of more than 50 books and the author of nine books. He is best known as the illustrator and co-creator ofKay Thompson'sEloise (1955) and others in theEloise series.
Knight has illustrated for a wide variety of clients, creating artwork for magazines, children's fashion advertisements, greeting cards, record albums as well as posters and music album covers for Broadway musicals, includingGypsy,Irene (1973),Half A Sixpence,Hallelujah Baby!, andNo, No, Nanette (1971).[1] He has over 100 U.S. copyrights for his illustration works.[2]
One of two sons of artist-writersClayton Knight andKatherine Sturges Dodge, Hilary Knight was born on Long Island inHempstead. His father illustrated aviation books, and his mother was a fashion and book illustrator. Living inRoslyn, New York, as a child, Hilary was age six when he moved to Manhattan with his family. Knight attended theCity and Country School (class of 1940) for elementary and middle school andFriends Seminary for high school.[3][4]
Knight recalled:
As a child, I loved to look at a set of books that belonged to my mother. They were illustrated byEdmund Dulac in a romantic, wonderful, detailed manner. I know he has influenced my style.
After study withGeorge Grosz andReginald Marsh at theArt Students League, Knight labored as a ship painter while serving in theU.S. Navy from 1944 to 1946. After the Navy, he worked for one summer as an assistant designer at a theater inOgunquit, Maine. Returning to New York, he studied at the School of Interior Design.[5] He studied architectural drafting at Delahanty Institute. He painted murals in private homes and entered the field of magazine illustration, starting withMademoiselle in 1952, followed byHouse & Garden,Gourmet,McCall's, andWoman's Home Companion.[5] His work as a humorous illustrator was strongly influenced by the British cartoonist and satiristRonald Searle.[6]
In January 1954 he metKay Thompson, who was a popular singer and actress at the time. Knight was creating the cartoons and illustrations forMademoiselle andHouse & Garden.[5] In 1955, he collaborated with Kay Thompson to create the whimsical black, white, and pink look ofEloise. Knight says that the image of Eloise was based on a 1930s painting by his motherKatherine Sturges Dodge.[7] The live CBS television adaptation onPlayhouse 90 (1956) withEvelyn Rudie as Eloise received such negative reviews that Kay Thompson vowed never to allow another film or TV adaptation.[8][9][10]
Three book sequels followed:Eloise in Paris (1957),Eloise at Christmastime (1958) andEloise in Moscow (1959). Thompson and Knight teamed to create another sequel,Eloise Takes a Bawth, working with children's book editorUrsula Nordstrom. That title was announced in theHarper Books for Boys and Girls fall 1964 catalog, but in the mid-1960s, Thompson removed the threeEloise sequels from print and did not allowEloise Takes a Bawth to be published. Thompson was reported to have considered the books as for adults and was shocked to see the books in only the children's section of a bookstore.[11] It was an action that deprived her collaborator of income for decades (a situation that changed with Thompson's death in 1998).[12] InSalon, Amy Benfer speculated on Thompson's motives in "Will the real Eloise please stand up?" (June 1, 1999):[13]
Kay Thompson got sick of us. Our initial admiration—a mass consumption of all things Eloise—was viewed as imitation and she did not consider it a form of flattery. Adults and children flooded the Plaza, all insisting that they were Eloise.... I think she became jealous. So does Hilary Knight, Thompson's illustrator and collaborator.
Eloise Takes a Bawth was finally published in 2002. The book was written by Thompson andMart Crowley with illustrations by Knight.[14] Knight recalled:
Kay and I were like parents to Eloise. We decided that we'd never make her older than six, and that we'd always keep the parents in the background. When you really study the book, you see that Eloise is somewhat wistful. And I guess my job now is to continue what Kay might have thought she was doing when she pulled the books in the first place—to protect Eloise.
For the first time in the history of theEloise books, Knight illustrated as well wrote one of the books in the series,The 365 Days of Eloise.[6]
Knight also illustrated three of the fourMrs. Piggle-Wiggle books written byBetty MacDonald.[15] Other publications with Knight illustrations includeGood Housekeeping and the children's magazineCricket. In addition to creating children's picture books—among them, in collaboration with poetMargaret Fishback,A Child's Book of Natural History (1969),[16] a revision and extension ofA Child's Primer of Natural History byOliver Herford—Knight has illustrated for other genres, such asPeg Bracken'sThe I Hate to Cook Book.[17] The roll call of artists Knight admires includesLudwig Bemelmans, Joseph Hirsch,Leo Lionni,Robert Vickrey, andGarth Williams.
His 1964 bookWhere's Wallace?, featuring anorangutan that kept escaping from the zoo to visit different places such as a circus, museum, department store, beach etc. and who had to be located in each of the books panoramic pictures, anticipatedWhere's Waldo? by more than 20 years.[18][19][20]
The Algonquin Cat written by Val Schaffner with drawings by Hilary Knight is a charmingly illustrated story about a real cat that resides in theAlgonquin Hotel in New York City.[21] There have been numerous cats in the hotel over the years.[22] This work was published byDelacorte Press andEleanor Friede in 1980.
Knight began creating posters forBroadway shows in 1965. He was hired byHarry Rigby, the producer ofHalf a Sixpence. Rigby later revealed in an interview that he could never have made the musical without Hilary. The shows produced by Rigby wereNo, No, Nannette,Good News, andI Love My Wife.[6]
Shows he created the poster artwork for include:No, No, Nanette (1971),Good News (1974),Gypsy (1974),I Love My Wife (1977),Ain't Misbehavin' (1978),Whoopee! (1979),Mame (1983),Meet Me in St. Louis (1989), andBusker Alley (1995).[23]
Over the decades, Knight maintained an apartment in midtown Manhattan, which also served as his studio and library. Here, he adds to his collection of books, sheet music, programs, and soundtrack and cast recordings. He is represented by two galleries—the Giraffics Gallery (East Hampton, New York) and Every Picture Tells a Story (Santa Monica, California).
The 2015HBO documentaryIt's Me, Hilary: The Man Who Drew Eloise, byLena Dunham, chronicles Knight's work on Eloise, personal life, and his tumultuous relationship with Kay Thompson.[24]
| Title | Year |
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| Hilary Knight'sMother Goose | 1962 |
| A Christmas stocking story[25] | 1963 |
| A Firefly in a Fir Tree[26] | 1963 |
| Angels & Berries & Candy Canes[27] | 1963 |
| Where's Wallace?[20] | 1964 |
| Hilary Knight'sCinderella[28] | 1978 |
| Hilary Knight'sThe twelve days of Christmas[29] | 1981 |
| Hilary Knight'sThe Owl and the pussy-cat (based on the poem byEdward Lear)[30] | 1983 |
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