Low worked extensively for English newspapers and publishers. Originally a New Zealander he came to Britain after the First World War, and always maintained a sharp outsider's view of the British political scene. He worked for the Conservative newspapers but always sustained a radical stance. He was a marvellous draftsman and was especially successful with multi-figure compositions.

JIX was a contraction for the baby faced politician Joyson-Hicks - this a masterpiece of facial nuance using the conventions of the Photobooth grid; from David Lowe, Ye Madde Designer, London 1935,p.15. This is a rich set of observations on the role and technique of the cartoonist.
 

Also from Ye Madde Designer, Baldwin's character reduced as his central feature achieves supremacy.

"Revolution at our Turkish bath" was originally published in July 1936 in the London Evening Standard The most impressive feature of Low's radicalism was his courage taking on the Powers-that-be even later during a time of War - when everybody was meant to pull together. His depiction of an elderly and reactionary Army officer more sympathetic to Cavalry than tanks materialised as "Colonel Blimp". The figure was given flesh by the film director Michael Powell in "The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp" . Low's creation gave rise to a handy archetypal figure with which to criticise the complacency and snobbery of the British establishment

Low combined an economy of word and concept with a phenomenal drawing talent. He was capable of the broadest of broadsides at the Prime Minister of the Day, and a moving spectacle, as here, of the dead coming back to haunt the defendants of the Nuremburg Trials of Nazi War Criminals, in a cartoon published on October 1st 1946.

detail from a double page cartoon for KEN magazine
July 1938



detail from a double page cartoon for KEN magazine
May 1938
Arriving for work - the design for the front board of
David Low and Horace Thorogood, Low and Terry, Hutchinson, London 1934.


 

By Chris Mullen
Information supplied by: http://www.adh.brighton.ac.uk