John Aldridge was born in Woolwich and studied classics at Oxford in the 1920s. He never received any formal art training but had drawn and painted since he was young. He received his first solo exhibition at the Leicester Galleries in 1933 and moved to Great Bardfield, Essex where he lived for the rest of his life.
The three illustrations that we have for sale were included in the book by C. Henry Warren entitled 'Adam was a Ploughman' published in 1947 by Eyre & Spottiswoode. The book was a collection of pen portraits of country dwellers and was dedicated to Thomas Hennell who Warren had worked with from the late 1930s. These drawings have an excellent provenance in that they were owned by Ruby Winifred Miller, Senior Editor at Eyre & Spottiswoode.