Milein Cosman, artist – obituary

Milein Cosman, who has died aged 96, came to Britain from Nazi Germany in 1939 and established a reputation as an artist and illustrator; she was best known for her extraordinarily vital line drawings of prominent 20th century musicians, artists and writers.

Early on in her career Milein Cosman survived a rebuff from JRR Tolkien, whose publishers, Allen & Unwin, had chosen her to illustrate his comic medieval fable Farmer Giles of Ham (1949). When they asked the writer’s opinion of some of her specimen drawings, however, Tolkien replied that while he felt she was an “artist of merit”, he doubted whether she was an illustrator. She was replaced by Pauline Baynes.

Whatever she made of Farmer Giles, Milein Cosman’s drawings of leading cultural figures, often sketched “on the wing” as she put it, brilliantly captured the energy and personality of figures ranging from Francis Bacon to Igor Stravinsky....