{"id":894300,"date":"2026-09-16T16:56:14","date_gmt":"2026-09-16T16:56:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/894300\/"},"modified":"2026-09-16T16:56:14","modified_gmt":"2026-09-16T16:56:14","slug":"previously-unseen-drawings-by-moomins-author-tove-jansson-to-go-on-show-in-london-tove-jansson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/894300\/","title":{"rendered":"Previously unseen drawings by Moomins author Tove Jansson to go on show in London | Tove Jansson"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Moomin books about lovable trolls with hippopotamus snouts who live in harmony with nature are a global publishing phenomenon, having sold up to 30m copies since the Finnish artist and writer Tove Jansson<\/a> wrote and illustrated them between 1945 and 1977.<\/p>\n

Now previously unseen drawings of her eccentric characters will be among more than 100 exhibits in a major exhibition that is being staged in London<\/a> 25 years after her death.<\/p>\n

Tove Jansson and her Families will open at the Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration<\/a> in November, it will be announced on Thursday.<\/p>\n

Billed as the UK\u2019s first exhibition to focus on Jansson\u2019s illustrations, it will feature sketches, photographs and films, as well as her correspondence with those closest to her and fans of all ages.<\/p>\n

Tove Jansson \u2018had this very special skill to harness themes that touch the reader\u2019, said her niece, Sophia Jansson. Photograph: Eva Konikoff<\/p>\n

The displays will include original art from her first published book, The Moomins<\/a> and the Great Flood, in which she presented a world \u201cwhere everything was natural and benign \u2013 and possible\u201d, in a story about Moomintroll\u2019s search, with Moominmamma, for their missing Moominpappa and how they found their way to the magical Moominvalley.<\/p>\n

Jansson\u2019s books celebrate nature, friendship, tolerance and the freedom to be oneself. Enchanting children and adults alike, they have been translated into more than 60 languages, inspiring animated films, television series and theme parks.<\/p>\n

A sketch of Moominpappa with a giant shell has not been shown before. Photograph: Moomin Characters<\/p>\n

Sophia Jansson, Tove\u2019s niece, told the Guardian: \u201cShe had this very special skill to harness themes that touch the reader \u2026 on a universal and a personal level \u2013 and then disguise them in these stories, so that we think we\u2019re reading about Moomins in Moominvalley and, when you finish the book, you realise that you\u2019re actually reading about \u2018us\u2019, about humans and how we interact and all our peculiarities.\u201d<\/p>\n

Previously unseen material will include a sketch of Moominpappa, a sea-loving adventurer, with a giant shell. It was an early draft for the cover of Moominpappa at Sea, in which the Moomin family moves to a remote island at the mercy of the sea and storms.<\/p>\n

It is among images that even Sophia, the chair of the Moomins Characters brand, has not seen before, but which have recently come to light: \u201cThis is the amazing thing about Tove. She was extremely prolific.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked whether this is the first-ever UK exhibition to focus on Jansson\u2019s illustrations, Sophia said: \u201cDefinitely, because the one in Dulwich [Picture Gallery in 2017] was mainly to show her paintings.\u201d<\/p>\n

Paul Gravett, a Jansson expert and guest curator at the Quentin Blake Centre, told the Guardian: \u201cThe prose novels are still extremely topical because of the sheer variety of characters that are brought together. They are filled with a lot of love and tolerance, that \u2018isn\u2019t it wonderful how very different we all are?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cMoomin celebrates that, enjoying eccentricity and going with the flow of life. This is one of the reasons that they\u2019re not just for children. They have a lot of depth to them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gravett said the draft book cover was different from the one eventually published, but \u201cevery bit as good\u201d.<\/p>\n

At the age of seven, Jansson was already writing and illustrating homemade booklets, which she sold to her classmates. Exhibits will include these drawings. \u201cYou can see a lot of the same fascination with fantasy and dreams, which came out of her childhood reading,\u201d Gravett said.<\/p>\n

Her passion for fantasy literature stayed with her. She illustrated Swedish editions of Lewis Carroll\u2019s The Hunting of the Snark and Alice in Wonderland in a horror style. With JRR Tolkien\u2019s The Hobbit, she reinterpreted his characters, making Gollum monstrously large.<\/p>\n

Jansson\u2019s books have been translated into more than 60 languages. Photograph: Moomin Characters<\/p>\n

Tolkien himself was surprised. Realising he had never clarified Gollum\u2019s size, he amended the second edition to describe him as \u201ca small, slimy creature\u201d. The first English edition with Jansson\u2019s illustrations will be published this month by HarperCollins.<\/p>\n

Jansson was an outspoken political cartoonist, criticising fascism during the second world war, once saying: \u201cMost of all I liked the fact that I got to be beastly to Hitler and Stalin.\u201d In one cartoon, she depicted a woman and little girl in a toy shop with the caption: \u201cDon\u2019t you have a doll that says \u2018Momma\u2019?\/ \u2018No, little friend, our new stock says \u2018Heil Hitler!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

She had a special connection with London: at a time when it was rare for female cartoonists to have their own daily strip, her first Moomin series went into print from 1954 in London\u2019s Evening News. Her comic strips were circulated worldwide.<\/p>\n

Exhibits will include a sketch for one of the earliest examples. Gravett said: \u201cIt\u2019s a miracle it survived because it\u2019s covered in coffee stains and it was headed for the waste paper bin. A fellow cartoonist spotted it and rescued it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gravett is working on a Jansson book, following his 2022 study<\/a> of her illustration work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Moomin books about lovable trolls with hippopotamus snouts who live in harmony with nature are a global…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":894301,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[449,458,459,64,63,460,134],"class_list":["post-894300","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-design","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/894300","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=894300"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/894300\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/894301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=894300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=894300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=894300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}