Their recent rediscovery was helped by Gravett himself, who shared photocopies of this book with other admirers, one of whom notified a Canadian publisher. “Tove innovated in particular by using elements of the setting and story to divide one panel from the next - a door, hat-stand, broom, tree - in a playful, inventive way to make her strips flow more cohesively without the empty white space usually between the panels.”ĭespite their popularity, many of the Moomin cartoons were not preserved, and only one compilation of the strips was created during their lifetime. “She was tutored in house in how to write and design contemporary strips which incorporated speech balloons inside the panels, rather than the old-fashioned tradition of relying heavily on lengthy texts beneath the panels.”Īlongside this in-house work, Jansson was innovating by herself, Gravett said. “The Evening News wanted her stories to be aimed at entertaining adult newspaper readers so they could be enjoyed on a variety of levels,” he explained to me. Gravett spoke to me about the significance of this part in her life’s work as an illustrator. The first Moomin cartoon debuted in the Evening News on September 20, 1954, after two years of intense discussions, planning and negotiations. Make like a Moomin at Dulwich Picture Gallery In the exhibition catalogue, comic historian Paul Gravett writes that they were “a visual outlet for her staunch opposition to war, fascism and communism, even if it meant her courting controversy and censorship.She was a remarkable rarity for being such an outspoken and highly visible female political commentator.” These covers were also the birthplace for a small creature called Snork, a clear early version of Moomintroll, her now legendary plump, white cartoon hero.

In 1929, she started to create covers for the satirical magazine Garm when she was just 15. Her cartoon work, though, helped to mark her as a political force and a philosophical soul. From her confident, bracing self-portraits to her atmospheric landscape paintings of her native Finland, her paintings are a tribute to her skills as both an artist and a storyteller. A major new exhibition at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, opening this week, will put these paintings on display, alongside drawings and cartoons from her extensive Moomin oeuvre. The Moomins remain Jansson’s biggest creative legacy, but she was a remarkable painter - if not as prolific as she would have liked to have been.

(Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Jenni Nurminen) Tove Jansson, Comic strip Moomin on the Riviera, 1955, British Cartoon Archive, University of Kent. New West End Company BRANDPOST | PAID CONTENT.

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