Sir David Low

Sir David Low , 1891-1963, British cartoonist, b. New Zealand. In 1919 Low went to England, where he worked on the London Star (1919-27). Thereafter he successively joined the staff of the Evening Standard (1927-50), the Daily Herald (1950-53), and finally the Manchester Guardian (from 1953). At the Standard he became noted for his sharp and perceptive caricatures and cartoons on national and international affairs. He created "Colonel Blimp," a caricature of the pompous British ultraconservative. Low's cartoons have been collected in A Cartoon History of Our Times (1939), Low on the War (1941), Years of Wrath (1946), which covers the period from 1931 to 1945, and The Fearful Fifties (1960).

Bibliography: See his autobiography (1956).

Low, Sir David (b Dunedin, 7 Apr. 1891; d London, 19 Sept. 1963). New Zealand cartoonist, active in Britain from 1919. He worked for numerous papers but is best known for his association with the London Evening Standard, 1927–50. His socialist views conflicted with the Conservative policy of this paper, but its proprietor Lord Beaverbrook thought so highly of him that he offered him ‘complete freedom in the selection and treatment of subject matter’. In 1932 Winston Churchill described him as ‘the greatest of our modern cartoonists—the greatest because of the vividness of his political conceptions, and because he possesses what few cartoonists have—a grand technique of draughtsmanship’. As well as satirizing well-known figures, Low invented imaginary characters to symbolize policies and attitudes of mind, the most famous of whom was ‘Colonel Blimp’, whose name has passed into the language to describe a type of muddle-headed complacent reactionary. Many collections of his cartoons appeared in book form, and he wrote Ye Madde Designer (1935), about the technique of cartooning, and British Cartoonists, Caricaturists and Comic Artists (1942) in the ‘Britain in Pictures’ series.

Low, Sir David (1891–1963). New Zealand cartoonist, active in Britain for most of his career. He was born in Dunedin and brought up in Christchurch. Although he attended drawing classes there he was essentially self-taught. He first had a drawing published in the Christchurch Spectator when he was only eleven, and he became the paper's political cartoonist in 1908, when he was 17. In 1911 he moved to Australia, where he worked for the Sydney Bulletin, and in 1919 he settled in London. There he initially worked for the Star, an evening paper with a strictly Liberal policy. In 1926 Lord Beaverbrook invited him to work for his Evening Standard. Low's Socialist views conflicted with the Conservative policy of this paper, but Beaverbrook thought so highly of him that he offered him ‘complete freedom in the selection and treatment of subject matter'. Low worked for the Standard from 1927 to 1950 and this period marked the height of his prestige and influence. In 1932 Winston Churchill described him as ‘the greatest of our modern cartoonists—the greatest because of the vividness of his political conceptions, and because he possesses what few cartoonists have—a grand technique of draughtsmanship', and in 1933 his depictions of Hitler as a militant pigmy caused the Evening Standard to be banned in Germany. As well as satirizing well-known figures, Low invented imaginary characters to symbolize policies and attitudes of mind, the most famous of whom was ‘ Colonel Blimp', whose name has passed into the language to describe a type of muddle-headed complacent reactionary. In 1950 Low left the Standard (Beaverbrook described the day he received his resignation as ‘Black Friday'), then worked for the Daily Herald until 1953 and for the Manchester Guardian from 1953 until his death. He was knighted in 1962. Many collections of his cartoons appeared in book form, and he wrote Ye Madde Designer (1935), about the technique of cartooning, and British Cartoonists, Caricaturists and Comic Artists (1942) in the ‘Britain in Pictures’ series. His autobiography appeared in 1956. John Geipel (The Cartoon, 1972) describes Low as ‘undoubtedly the most outstanding British political cartoonist, an artist whose long and unchallenged reign straddled four decades … Low's conception was dramatically bold, simple and assertive, and his facile brushwork has been aptly likened to the techniques of oriental painting.’