Exhibition: Four Legs Good, Two Legs Bad: The Extraordinary Animaland of Arthur Humberstone

An exhibition of production material and unseen ephemera from Animaland (1948), Animal Farm (1954) and Watership Down (1978)

Arthur Humberstone (1912 – 1999) was a British animator, artist and director whose credits include Animal Farm, Yellow Submarine and The BFG. He worked with Halas & Batchelor and as a senior animator with Martin Rosen on Watership Down and The Plague Dogs.

Arthur Humberstone's influence is evident from the privately managed Arthur Humberstone Animation Archive which contains a wealth of pre-production materials spanning his 45-year career. The archive reveals both the profound influence Humberstone had over animal aesthetics whilst enhancing our understanding of animation history.

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The exhibition archivists, Nigel & Klive Humberstone.
Nigel and Klive Humberstone are film music composers and founding members of In The Nursery, the Sheffield-based band. Parallel to their studio works, In The Nursery have developed their Optical Music Series, an ongoing repertoire of new soundtracks for silent films. They also manage the Arthur Humberstone Animation Archive which covers materials from their father’s 45 year career in animation from training at Gaumont British Animation, Moor Hall through work on Halas & Batchelor’s Animal Farm and subsequent classic animated features and TV shows including Yellow Submarine, Watership Down, The Plague Dogs and The BFG.