William "Bill" Ward (August 20, 1927 - July 24, 1996) was a British erotic artist. He is best known for his strips featuring bear-like men and in particular his Adventures of Drum series for Drummer magazine.
Partner Brian Rawlinson, Stephen Helliwell,
Queer Places:
42a Linden Gardens, Notting Hill Gate, London W2 4ER
William "Bill" Ward (August 20, 1927 - July 24, 1996) was a British erotic artist. He is best known for his strips featuring bear-like men and in particular his Adventures of Drum series for Drummer magazine.
Bill was a gay graphic artist born 20th August 1927 in East London. His publishing career began as a copyboy in newspaper publishing before becoming an art editor for children’s comics and then a graphic artist. He worked as a graphic artist for Amalgamated Press and Fleetway on childrens’ comics, notably their Thriller series (November 1951 – May 1963). In 1957 Bill had his first erotic drawings published anonymously in the British physique magazine Male Classics and he would later work openly for hard-core American magazines. Bill’s work features in the same issue of Drummer that includes Robert Mapplethorpe’s first commissioned cover (issue 24, September 1978).
During the 1970s he was working for the Mansell Collection, a commercial picture archive which was housed at 42 Linden Gardens; he was living there with actor Brian Rawlinson and an outbuilding served as his own studio. The picture library and the house was owned by Louie Boutroy and run with her unofficial adopted son and protégée George Anderson and his life partner Harold, who also lived at the house.
Censorship in the early days when Bill was working as an erotic artist dictated specific working methods. It was illegal to have gay sex and this impacted on the ways in which erotic drawings could be reproduced and circulated. The more usual methods of reproducing drawings, for example as lithographs or etchings, were problematic because this would have meant gaining access to printing presses operated by people who were gay – or risk being arrested. Similarly, photographers working with gay subject matter had to develop and print their own photographs. In order to be able to distribute gay erotic drawings they were marketed in the form of photographs (hand printed silver gelatine prints) made from hand drawn illustrations. Catalogues were made to market these photographs – for which the photographs of illustrations were re-photographed. Frequently illustrators used pseudonyms to protect their identities.
In the 1990s, now living in Stratford with his then partner Christie's silver expert Stephen Helliwell, both were diagnosed with AIDS and died within a few months of each other in 1996.[8] On 24th July 1996, at the tail end of the worst period of the AIDS epidemic, the British erotic graphic artist Bill Ward died at Stratford in London. Later in life Bill had attracted a fanatical following, as ardent as that of Tom of Finland, for his exquisitely drawn large hairy men (bears). A counter point to Tom’s perfect physiques, his often large-bellied characters indulged in explicit urban and Sci-Fi adventures that echo his mainstream comic work on stories such as Dick Turpin. Brian looked on it affectionately but was not interested in and did not have the time to find a home for the material he had been left.
Ward made works under the pseudonyms ‘Titan’ and ‘Tristano’. His published graphics can be found in British publications such as Him, Sam, and Daddy as well as Manifest Reader, Stroke and Drummer in America where he became very well known. The famously illusive legendary artist Rex owns work by Ward and made a point of getting to know him.
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