Raymond Sheppard - Christmas Miracle

"Christmas Miracle" in Argosy Jan 1957

It's time to start adding posts to this blog now that advanced copies of Illustrators issue number two has reached our shores! Yours will be here early January - author's privilege! Geoff West, Peter Richardson and team have produced an excellent magazine - squarebound - almost a book, in which you can read about  

• A Brush with Fitzrovia: The Elegant Art of David Wright (see link for art)
  
• Blades and Brocades: The Art of Cecil Doughty (see link for art)
• Taking the Rough with the Smooth: The Urbane Art of Renato Fratini and also
• Under the Great Arch of Heaven: The Iridescent World of Raymond Sheppard 

 by myself - don't believe the introduction where it claims that Norman Wright wrote it! My shoulders are too broad to worry about such things. Norman Wright has written lots of scholarly articles on illustrators, magazines and comics, but he's not me.
Anyway to get a sneak peek click on the link below the cover, where you can see the first two pages of my article but also the other quality articles

Click here for preview

The January 1957 issue of Argosy contained, as far as I can tell, the first telling of Paul Gallico's 'Christmas Miracle' story. It was later reprinted and illustrated by Janet and Anne Grahame-Johnstone as Miracle in the Wilderness and told the story set in the 18th century colonial wars in America when the God of the Christians and the God of the Indians combined to produce a touching Christmas miracle. Raymond Sheppard illustrated it in Argosy with one black and white scene of a buck, doe and fawn - see above.

Sheppard sketched all the time and here courtesy of Christine, his daughter, is one of a buck with antlers.