Charles Keeping
, 1924 - 1988
Charles Keeping was an English illustrator born in Lambeth, London. During World War II, he worked in an ammunitions factory, as a gaslighter, and (after turning 18) as a wireless operator in the Royal Navy. After the war, he studied illustration and lithography at Regent Street Polytechnic and went on to produce illustrations for various publications, including Punch magazine. Keeping came to prominence when he was commissioned by Oxford University Press to illustrate Rosemary Sutcliff's The Silver Branch, the sequel to her most famous novel The Eagle of the Ninth, and he would go on to illustrate many of her subsequent novels set in Roman and post-Roman Britain. He also illustrated Leon Garfield and Edward Blishen's adaptation of Greek myths, The God Beneath the Sea, and served as the illustrator for many Folio Society editions, including the complete works of Charles Dickens. He lived in Bromley, London with his wife Renate, who was also an artist and proprietor of the Keeping Gallery until her death in 2014.
Source:
Douglas Martin, Charles Keeping: An Illustrator's Life, London: Julia MacRae Books, 1993.
thekeepinggallery.co. (accessed: July 1, 2021).
Bio prepared by David Walsh, University of Kent, djw43@kent.ac.uk
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