Anne Bullen

Depending on the world you inhabit, Anne Bullen will be known to you either as an illustrator of pony books, or as the co-owner of the Catherston Stud with her husband Lt Colonel Jack Bullen, but I think those two Anne Bullens cannot be considered separately. Anne Bullen’s illustrations, although they portray different types of ponies and horses, all have a distinct Bullen “look”: a feeling of lightness of movement. Even the heaviest carthorse could at any moment burst out in a powerful floating trot across the field. You can imagine with each drawing how the ponies would move: and in most I can see them moving off with that lovely show ring swing.

The Bullens bred ponies of different sorts: mostly Welsh to start with, but some Exmoor, Dartmoor and cross-breeds. I wonder if Anne Bullen had in her mind the whole time an ideal pony who moved with lightness and grace and who embodied quality. In her work breeding, she must have striven for this, and I think this ideal pony she sought in her breeding emerged too in her illustrations. Cascade, in Monica Edwards’ Wish For A Pony, is the pony that inhabits many small girls’ dreams, and the British pony breed illustrations in Ponycraft all have a look about them almost of fantasy: although recognisibly the breed, they are all overlaid with the characteristic Bullen feeling.

Anne Bullen worked principally for the publishers Collins from 1938 to 1950. Although she illustrated many different pony book authors, arguably her most striking work was for Monica Edwards. The fashion for producing pony book dustjackets as either black and white or virtually so (Six Ponies and Three Ponies for Shannan both have only the faintest degree of colour) did not allow Anne Bullen to extend herself as much as she later did for Monica Edwards’ first four books. These four stories all have full colour dustjackets which are delightful, in particular Wish for a Pony, which shows Cascade against a darkening sky: he is certainly the sort of pony who cantered through my dreams, bristling with quality.

The ponies certainly emerge much more strongly than their riders: which is possibly why Anne Bullen illustrated only two of Violet Needham’s novels (The Black Riders and The Emerald Crown). Neither of these are pony stories, though their strongly Romantic setting and storylines are matched well by the fantasy quality of the illustrations.

Although Anne Bullen illustrated much fiction, she only made one excursion into it herself: this was Darkie, the Life Story of a Pony, which was co-written with Rosemary Oldfield, and illustrated by Anne. The two other books she wrote are both non-fiction: Showing Ponies, published after her death, and Ponycraft, a short book combining the basics of looking after and riding a pony with a survey of British Native Pony breeds.

After training at the Academie Julien in Paris and at the Chelsea School of Art (and also running a circus with her siblings) Anne Bullen’s career in book illustration coincided with the birth of the classic pony story: one which is told from the point of view of the rider. Joanna Cannan (mother of the Pullein-Thompsons) wrote A Pony For Jean, published in 1936, a funny and wry look at the acquisition of a pony and introduction to the countryside of an urban child, and the first book Anne Bullen illustrated.