After graduating, Froud spent five years working as a
commercial illustrator in
Soho, London before moving to
Chagford, Devon in 1975.[13][14] Between 1972 and 1976, he illustrated four books by children's author
Margaret Mahy[15] and Are All the Giants Dead? by
Mary Norton.[16] In 1976, Froud was featured in Once Upon a Time: Some Contemporary Illustrators of Fantasy, a survey of modern British illustrators.[17] In 1977, an anthology of his artwork, The Land of Froud, was published.[18]
In collaboration with his friend and fellow artist
Alan Lee, Froud created the 1978 book Faeries, an illustrated compendium of
faerie folklore.[14]Faeries reached number four on the
New York Times Best Sellers list,[19][20] and by 2003 had sold over five million copies.[21]
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,[32][33] and subsequently a number of non-Labyrinth-related books about fairies and
goblins. Their Lady Cottington series parodied the
Cottingley Fairies phenomenon.[1] 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[3] and the
Chesley Award for Best Interior Illustration.[4]
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”.[34][35] The resulting novels were to be published by
Bantam Books.[36] 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.[37][38]
His artwork has been exhibited in the United Kingdom and the United States.[2] By 2003, Froud had sold over eight million large-format books of his paintings of fairies.[21]
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.[13] The couple married on 31 May 1980, in
Chagford.[39][40] Their son
Toby (born 1984) portrayed the infant of the same name in Labyrinth at the age of one,[41] and later became a puppeteer and creature fabricator,[42] working alongside his parents on The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance as design supervisor.[43]
Through his son, Froud has one grandson, Sebastian.[44]
Among Froud's major influences are the 19th and early 20th-century illustrators
Arthur Rackham,
Edmund Dulac,[11][24] and
Richard Dadd.[46] 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.[47] He is frequently inspired by the landscape of
Dartmoor.[30] Other influences Froud cites include the Robinson brothers (
Thomas,
Charles and
William),[46] the
Pre-Raphaelites,
William Morris and Northern European art from the 1500s and 1600s.[47] He was fascinated by
Greek,
Druid,
Celtic and German 15th-century history and mythology.[46] Froud's work has also been influenced by
Arthurian legend, "com[ing] from
Glastonbury as a sacred centre".[48] 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."[11]
In 1979, Froud was nominated for the
British Fantasy Award for Best Artwork for Plate 12 of his 1977 book, The Land of Froud.[49] For his 1978 book with Alan Lee, Faeries, Froud won second place in the 1979
Locus Award for Best Art Book[50] (Froud has been a runner up four times through to 2015).[51]Faeries was also nominated for the 1979
Balrog Award for Best Professional Publication.[52] The same year, Froud was also runner up for the Locus Award for Best Artist (he has been a runner up four times through to 1999).[51]
Four years later, Froud was a nominee at the 1983
Hugo Awards in the category of
Best Non-Fiction Book for The World of the Dark Crystal, for which Froud was the illustrator in a partnership with writer J. J. Llewellyn.[53]The World of the Dark Crystal won fifth place in the 1983 Locus Award for Best Nonfiction/Reference Book.[54] The same year, Froud was also nominated for the Balrog Award for Best Artist.[55]
In 1995, Froud won the
Hugo Award for Best Original Artwork for his illustrations in Lady Cottington's Pressed Fairy Book, a collaboration with writer
Terry Jones.[3] The book also won the
Chesley Award for Best Interior Illustration, and Froud was also nominated that year for the Chesley Award for Artistic Achievement.[4] For The Wise Woman, Froud won a certificate in the 1995
Spectrum Award for Best Book.[57]
For his illustrations in
Terry Windling's novel, The Wood Wife, Froud was nominated for the
BSFA Award for
Best Artwork in 1998.[58] The following year, for his artwork in Good Faeries/Bad Faeries, another collaboration with Windling, Froud won his second Chesley Award for Best Interior Illustration[5] (he has been a finalist six times through to 2008).[51]
In 2001, Froud, along with his wife, was awarded the
Inkpot Award.[6] Froud received a lifetime achievement award from the New York
Society of Illustrators Museum in 2011.[59]
^"Locus Awards 1979". Science Fiction Awards Database. Locus Science Fiction Foundation.
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^
abc"Brian Froud". Science Fiction Awards Database. Locus Science Fiction Foundation.
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^"Balrog Awards 1979". Science Fiction Awards Database. Locus Science Fiction Foundation.
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^"1983 Hugo Awards". World Science Fiction Society. 26 July 2007. Retrieved 6 December 2019.
^"Locus Awards 1983". Science Fiction Awards Database. Locus Science Fiction Foundation.
Archived from the original on 20 August 2019. Retrieved 12 March 2020.
^"Balrog Awards 1983". Science Fiction Awards Database. Locus Science Fiction Foundation.
Archived from the original on 4 August 2019. Retrieved 12 March 2020.
^"Spectrum Awards 1995". Science Fiction Awards Database. Locus Science Fiction Foundation.
Archived from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 25 December 2019.