H.M Bateman: The Man Who Went Mad On Paper

H. M. Bateman (1887-1970) was the first modern master of twentieth-century British cartooning. His dramatic and expressive drawings often sizzle with intensity – he had the ability to ‘draw funnily’. Best remembered as the creator of ‘The Man Who . . .’ drawings of social faux pas and a master of the story without words, he was also an acute observer of British society from the Edwardian era through to the 1930s.

This exhibition shows over 120 original cartoons including his witty observations of suburban, sporting, working and theatrical ‘types’. During the First World War he created the landmark sequence The Boy Who Breathed on the Glass in the British Museum, which is being lent by the British Museum itself. Also included in the exhibition is his tour de force The One-Note Man, which inspired a scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1934 film The Man Who Knew Too Much.