Eelco Martinus ten Harmsen van der Beek (more commonly Harmsen van der Beek or just Beek; October 8, 1897 – July 24, 1953) was a Dutch illustrator and commercial artist. Abroad, he is best remembered for his illustration of Enid Blyton's Noddy books. Van der Beek was the creator of the ' character in 1935. This was a

comic strip A comic strip is a sequence of drawings, often cartoons, arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions. Traditionally, throughout the 20th and into the 21st ...

featuring a character made of berries which was commissioned by a jam factory in Tiel. He was already well known in the Netherlands when he approached London publishers

Sampson Low Sampson Low (18 November 1797 – 16 April 1886) was a bookseller and publisher in London in the 19th century. Early years Born in London in 1797, he was the son of Sampson Low, printer and publisher, of Berwick Street, Soho. He served a short ...

at the end of the 1940s. The result was the creation of the Noddy series for young children, authored by Enid Blyton - still a major property for animators half a century later. Van der Beek simply signed his work as "Beek". The conscious intention to create a Disney-style sympathetic focus character — a European

Mickey Mouse Mickey Mouse is an animated cartoon Character (arts), character co-created in 1928 by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks. The longtime mascot of The Walt Disney Company, Mickey is an Anthropomorphism, anthropomorphic mouse who typically wears red sho ...

— was reportedly a major factor. Beek's death in 1953 led to a few new illustrators for the Noddy books, amongst which was his assistant Peter Wienk.

Biography

Beek's father was a pharmacist in Amsterdam. As a child, he and his brother Hein sold postcards which Beek had drawn, on the streets of Amsterdam. Eelco attended the Rijksschool voor Kunstnijverheid and the Rijksacademie voor Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam from 1916 to 1918 and subsequently began a career as a commercial artist, as well as an illustrator for newspapers and magazines. One of the first books he illustrated was ''De Driewenschen'' (1920), by Jac van der Klei, a writer of children's books and school textbooks. In 1935, Beek started to draw the comic strip ' for the jam factory "". It was a metre long and was displayed on shelves in front of the jam jars in stores.
/ref> Beek's wife, Freddie Langeler (1899–1948), herself an artist, wrote the rhyming text for the strip and coloured in the drawings. In 1936, a printer named De IJssel produced a cardboard theatre which could be used to display the comic strip as a slide show. It was illuminated from behind with a flashlight. It was dubbed the "Flipposcoop" (Flipposcope) and Flipje appeared in a special strip with instructions on how to assemble and load the theatre. In 1953, Beek asked De Betuwe for permission to release the Flipje character in the United Kingdom. They refused and Beek severed relations with the company. He died six days later. Beek and Langeler had a son and a daughter, Fritzi Harmsen van Beek (1927–2009), who was a writer, poet and herself an illustrator.

References

External links

Bio at the comiclopedia
{{DEFAULTSORT:Beek, Harmsen Van Der 1897 births 1953 deaths Dutch comics artists Dutch illustrators Dutch children's book illustrators Artists from Amsterdam Enid Blyton illustrators