In the USA Austin Briggs has a fairly solid reputation among many contemporary illustrators and those with an interest in the subject. But the very American nature of his work has meant that he is much less well known elsewhere on the planet. He was one of a group of illustrators who followed Norman Rockwell and his contemporaries as essentially representational illustrators, but who also developed more modernist expressionistic techniques more suited to postwar sensibilities. I hope you enjoy this look at his work.
And for those who have the misfortune to not be British, we don't pronounce gouache as gwash. We pronounce it properly.