Brian Froud

Brian Froud (born 1947) is an English fantasy illustrator and conceptual designer. He is most widely known for his 1978 book Faeries with Alan Lee, and as the conceptual designer of the Jim Henson films The Dark Crystal (1982) and Labyrinth (1986). His Son Toby Froud, also starred as the 18 month old baby in Labyrinth (1986). According to Wired, Froud is "one of the most pre-emiminent visualizers of the world of faerie and folktale".

Most recently, Froud developed the 2019 streaming television series The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance.

Early life

Froud was born in Winchester, England in 1947. An only child, he grew up in rural Hampshire before moving to Kent. In 1967 he enrolled as a painter at Maidstone College of Art, where he graduated with a first class honors diploma in Graphic Design in 1971.

Career

After graduating, Froud spent five years working as a commercial illustrator in Soho, London before moving to Chagford, Devon in 1975. Between 1972 and 1976, he illustrated four books by children's author Margaret Mahy and Are All the Giants Dead? by Mary Norton. In 1976, Froud was featured in Once Upon a Time: Some Contemporary Illustrators of Fantasy, a survey of modern British illustrators. In 1977, an anthology of his artwork, The Land of Froud, was published.

In collaboration with his friend and fellow artist Alan Lee, Froud created the 1978 book Faeries, an illustrated compendium of faerie folklore. Faeries reached number four on the New York Times Best Sellers list, and by 2003 had sold over five million copies.

Froud's artwork in Once Upon a Time and The Land of Froud brought him to the attention of Jim Henson, who sought out Froud to collaborate on his all-puppetry film The Dark Crystal. Froud served as the conceptual designer of The Dark Crystal, released in 1982. The same year, his concept art for the film was published in the companion book The World of the Dark Crystal. Froud was also the conceptual designer for Henson's next feature film, Labyrinth, released in 1986, as well as for the pilot episode of Henson's television series The Storyteller, first aired in 1987. Following his collaborations with Henson, Froud's filmography continued; as a designer for the 1989 Japanese-American animated film Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland; as a visual consultant on the 2000 American animated film The Life & Adventures of Santa Claus and P. J. Hogan's 2003 live-action film Peter Pan; and as a concept artist on the 2016 Disney film Pete's Dragon. Froud returned to working with the Jim Henson Company as the primary conceptual designer of the 2019 Netflix series The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, a prequel to The Dark Crystal.

In the late 1980s, Froud formed an artistic-literary partnership with Terry Jones, who was a screenwriter on Labyrinth. Together they produced The Goblins of Labyrinth (1986), a companion book containing Froud's concept art for the film, and subsequently a number of non-Labyrinth-related books about fairies and goblins. Their Lady Cottington series parodied the Cottingley Fairies phenomenon. For his artwork in the first book of the series, Lady Cottington's Pressed Fairy Book (1994), Froud won the Hugo Award for Best Original Artwork and the Chesley Award for Best Interior Illustration.

In 1991, Froud created over 50 paintings and drawings for his Faerielands series, a collaborative project in which he invited four fantasy authors — Charles de Lint, Patricia A. McKillip, Terri Windling and Midori Snyder — to choose their favourite of his pieces and write stories to go with them, based on the premise that "Faerie, inextricably bound as it is to nature and natural forces, is gravely threatened by the ecological crises that human beings have brought to our world". The resulting novels were to be published by Bantam Books. However, only de Lint's The Wild Wood and McKillip's Something Rich and Strange were published in 1994 under the banner "Brian Froud's Faerielands" before the project was cancelled.

His artwork has been exhibited in the United Kingdom and the United States. By 2003, Froud had sold over eight million large-format books of his paintings of fairies.

Personal life

Froud is married to Wendy Froud (née Midener), a puppet-maker and sculptor whom he met at Jim Henson Studios in 1978 while working on The Dark Crystal. The couple married on 31 May 1980, in Chagford. Their son Toby (born 1984) portrayed the infant of the same name in Labyrinth at the age of one, and later became a puppeteer and creature fabricator, working alongside his parents on The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance as design supervisor. Through his son, Froud has one grandson.

Artistic style and influences

Froud's artwork frequently draws upon fairy tales and European folklore. His paintings of fairies are known for recontexualising Victorian and Edwardian-era beliefs about fairies and were part of a revival of fairy painting seen during the late 20th century.

Among Froud's major influences are the 19th and early 20th-century illustrators Arthur Rackham, Edmund Dulac, and Richard Dadd. Froud cites the early influence of Rackham, "in particular, [Rackham's] drawings of trees that had faces", as sparking his interest in illustrating fairy tales, and describes having had a love of nature from childhood that has informed his style. He is frequently inspired by the landscape of Dartmoor. Other influences Froud cites include the Robinson brothers (Thomas, Charles and William), the Pre-Raphaelites, William Morris and Northern European art from the 1500s and 1600s. He has stated that he was fascinated by Greek, Druid, Celtic and German 15th-century history and mythology. Froud's work has also been influenced by Arthurian legend, "com[ing] from Glastonbury as a sacred centre". Jeremiah Horrigan of the Poughkeepsie Journal wrote that Froud's style "echoes not only the great 19th century illustrators he reveres, but also harbors a wealth of elements ranging from Medieval to ancient Celtic and Nordic folk art."

Works

Brian Froud's Faerielands series

Something Rich and Strange (1994) by Patricia A. McKillip