In 2025, Soldiers of Oxfordshire Museum will launch a brand-new exhibition of original artwork by E. H. Shepard, best known as the original illustrator for A. A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh and the 1931 edition of Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows.
The collection of Shepard’s work, including some of his children’s illustrations alongside a wealth of his Great War sketches and comic art, come to the museum on loan from the University of Surrey Archives and The Shepard Trust – on show for the first time in Oxfordshire.
The Woodstock-based military museum is asking visitors and local people to share the impact the characters Shepard drew to life have had on them, and is calling for them to bring in their own Winnie-the-Pooh character teddy bears to go on show alongside the exhibition itself.
By the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, Ernest H. Shepard had already become a regular contributor to the popular Punch magazine, and he often drew cartoons about the war for the publication, among many others. By 1915 recruitment increased to include those over 30 and Shepard soon enlisted, serving as an officer in the Royal Garrison Artillery, first in France and later Italy. From the start of his officer training in 1915, he began to document the war as he saw it, in pencil sketches, pen and ink drawings, and even watercolours.
The museum looks forward to welcoming visitors to the new exhibition from 18th January to 31st August 2025.
Anyone interested in sharing their bear, loaning it to the museum for display alongside the exhibition, can get in touch by:
Email: engagement@sofo.org.uk
Phone: 01993 810 210
Full details of the exhibition and the museum’s supporting events programme will be shared in January 2025.
