Angela Barrett


Angela Barrett is a British artist and illustrator. She has illustrated picture books, children's books and novels, including various fairytales.

Life and career

Barrett grew up sewing and drawing. She attended Thurrock Technical College and worked in retail display. She then attended Maidstone art school and later the Royal College of Art. Barrett's first illustrated book was The King, the Cat and the Fiddle, published in 1983 and written by Yehudi Menuhin and Christopher Hope.
In 2013, stamps depicting novels by Jane Austen were illustrated by Barrett and released by Royal Mail for the 200th anniversary of the novel Pride and Prejudice.

Style

Barrett's work is mainly created using watercolor, gouache, colored pencils, and ink. She is known for her period pieces and the research she applies to her work. For the 1998 book Joan of Arc, she researched 15th-century art and illuminated manuscripts to create a visual style for the story, using motifs inspired by medieval French fabrics. She uses photographs as reference for her compositions.
Barrett works in a realistic style with distorted figures, proportions and perspectives. Joanna Carey for The Guardian stated Barrett's illustrations have "a stillness and a quiet atmospheric intensity..." Valerie Coghlan stated in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Children's Literature that Barrett's "slightly elongated figures and faces and distorted perspective are frequently used to heighten tension and impart a sense of mystery."

Illustrated works

Awards and honors