Raymond Briggs - from 'London Portraits' by Carl Randall

Yesterday Carl Randall posted his portrait of Raymond Briggs on Facebook to mark the news of his death age 88 on Tuesday.

Last night I watched two programmes about Raymond Briggs on BBC (links below are to the programmes on iPlayer) - both of which I highly recommend

• The first was Raymond Briggs: Snowmen, Bogeymen and Milkmen - which was a portrait of his life involving interviews with Raymond Briggs and contributions from both friends and admirers (and there's a lot of those)
• The second was Ethel and Ernest - which was a hand drawn animated film based on his award winning book by author and illustrator Raymond Briggs.

This was the point when the background to Carl Randall's portrait of Raymond suddenly made sense. It's the house at 65 Ashen Grove, Wimbledon Park where he was born and where he lived for the first 23 years of his life - apart from when he was called up.

Below are stills from the video of Carl painting Raymond and Raymond talking about the house. Carl made back the video in 2016 when he was creating the London Portrait series.

Plus the video about the series - set up to start at the Raymond Briggs section.

You can see the completed painting on Carl's website copyright Making A Mark Publications

Carl Randall painting Raymond Briggs

Carl Randall painting Raymond Briggs

Author/Illustrator Raymond Briggs chose 65 Ashen Grove as the backdrop of his portrait because he was born and brought up in the house, and it also features in his book ‘Ethel and Ernest’.

For more about Raymond Briggs see:

• his page on his agent's website
• my blog post yesterday RIP Raymond Briggs (1934 - 2022)
• the Wikipedia entry

For more about Carl Randall's 

• series of London Portraits - which depict people and places in contemporary London
• commissions