From the archives of Bob Montgomery, motoring historian
GORDON CROSBY: Motoring art is today a multi-million pound business, with the works of prominent artists fetching extraordinary prices at auction. Yet the artist regarded by many as the finest ever to tackle motoring subjects, and revered amongst collectors never managed to have even one of his motoring subjects hung on the walls of the prestigious Royal Academy (although he did manage to have the first aeronautical picture ever to be hung by the RA).
F Gordon Crosby's life was full of such contradictions. With no formal art training he began his working career in the unlikely location of the Daimler drawing office as a 'Draftsworm' before discovering his natural artistic ability.
But his time at Daimlers served to give his drawings a technical accuracy and mechanical feeling that few could match - with the exception of the great American artist, Peter Helck.
Somewhat by trial and error, Crosby found his way to the offices of The Autocar and began his professional career there in 1908 staying until his untimely death by his own hand in August 1943.
Sadly, because virtually all of his work was produced to meet tight deadlines for The Autocar magazine, a great many of his works were simply discarded after use and have been lost. Around 450 are known, and more turn up from time to time.
The majority can be divided into two categories - motor racing and touring. The motor racing material was almost invariably produced to illustrate reports of a contemporary race and very often Crosby would pick a likely place on a circuit for an incident and sketch in the background detail before the race began, relying on his own memory or reports from a third party for the details of the cars and their drivers afterwards.
These paintings or sketches were produced in a very short time and would then have to be rushed back by Crosby to The Autocar's printers for inclusion in the following week's magazine. In the case of Continental race meetings this often occasioned a carefully planned dash by car and boat, and later by plane, to The Autocar printers.
His touring pictures often have a different quality as they could be prepared in advance of the appearance of an article at considerably more leisure. Crosby's ability to produce 'from the driver's seat' pictures is quite extraordinary and has never been equalled.
His touring pictures of the years between the two world wars have given to us a unique portrayal of motoring on the roads of Europe at this time. Crosby could often be whimsical and sometimes his touring pictures bend reality but nowhere is his art shown better than in his pictures of the open road.
In particular his pictures of night driving are magnificent and have never been equalled.
Sadly, towards the end of Crosby's life, 30 years of producing fine work against impossible deadlines began to have an effect on him and he found it harder to produce new work.
In August 1943, at the age of just 58, depression and the death of his fighter pilot son Peter in action led to F Gordon Crosby taking his own life. With his passing, so too passed the age of the greatest of the motoring artists.