Peter Connolly

[D B Campbell]

Also a good one (whole page) by Simon James, using some of the material deployed by Chris Haines in his eulogy (along with PC's cavalry charge painting), in The Times on Saturday (16th June 2012, p.83).

Pulled this off the Infoweb server:

Peter Connolly - Author and illustrator of popular history books especially about the military life and times of the Greco-Roman world (Times, The (London, England) - Saturday, June 16, 2012)

Peter Connolly was an author, an illustrator, an historian and an experimental archaeologist. He was most widely known for meticulously researched, full-colour popular history books which were translated into many languages. These were written and illustrated in his highly characteristic style, packed with immensely detailed paintings (normally gouaches) of original artefacts and reconstructions of life and action.

His volumes ranged from the Holy Land in the time of Jesus to Pompeii, Athens and Rome, and (his final book, with Hazel Dodge) the Colosseum. But his special passion was the military history and archaeology of the Greco-Roman world, its neighbours and antagonists, presented in a succession of books exploring armaments, strategy, battles and battlefield tactics, siege warfare, forts and fortifications. A pair of slim volumes explored many of these themes through the life of a real Roman legionary turned cavalryman and decorated hero, Tiberius Claudius Maximus, known from a tombstone.

The vital underpinning to Connolly's success as a popular author-illustrator was his ability as a scholarly researcher, bringing authority and authenticity to his books. His growing academic reputation led to an honorary research fellowship at University College London and culminated in his election as a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 1985. These were notable honours because Connolly had no formal qualifications as archaeologist or historian; he was entirely self-taught.

Peter William Connolly was born in Surbiton, Surrey, in 1935. He was one of six children of an artist father. After boarding school Connolly relieved the boredom of National Service in the RAF through commissions to paint officers' portraits, and reading about the ancient world. He then trained as a commercial illustrator at Brighton College of Arts and Crafts, but his burgeoning passion for antiquity led to a more multifaceted career.

From the early 1970s his interest in the Roman army brought him into contact with academic specialists, who came to respect his meticulous studies of battlefields and weaponry. He became a regular participant in Brian Dobson's annual Durham University "Roman Army School". A key early collaboration was with H. Russell Robinson, curator of the Tower Armouries, who was preparing his seminal Armour of Imperial Rome (1975). Robinson worked out how the famous iron-strip armour was constructed, and Connolly prepared technical drawings of the new reconstructions for the book. These, the colour paintings of legionaries on the cover, and simultaneous publication of Connolly's own first book, The Roman Army, marked the real start of his career as an archaeological reconstruction illustrator.

Unlike Alan Sorrell, who built on the work of Amédée Forestier to popularise the genre of archaeological reconstruction painting in Britain, Connolly did not regard himself as an artist, but always described himself as an illustrator, emphasising the craft skills needed to convey academic information and ideas clearly and compellingly, in aesthetically appealing ways, through visual means. For him the techniques and aesthetics of image-making were, like those of composing text, critically important, but illustration was more the medium for his messages than an end in itself.

What also distinguished Connolly from other well-known illustrators of historical topics such as Ronald Embleton and Angus McBride was the depth to which he researched every detail of his pictures. This was manifested not just in the extensive library of classical sources and archaeological books he built up, but in the long trips he undertook, with academic friends such as Margaret Roxan, to survey battlefields and examine museum artefacts.

His own craft skills allowed him to go one step further: not satisfied simply with making clear and elegant drawings of his interpretations, he also made 3-D scale maps and models of buildings. To understand how ancient artefacts were made and how they worked, he would make full-scale replicas and experiment, thus becoming a skilled experimental archaeologist.

His greatest achievement in this regard was recovering the secret of a fundamental piece of ancient technology: the Roman saddle. Since Victorian times it has been widely assumed that, before the early medieval introduction of the stirrup, horsemen must have been prone to falling, and so cavalry could not have been very effective. No complete Roman saddle survives, but leather saddle covers do, along with ancient depictions. Building on earlier Dutch work, in collaboration with the archaeological leather expert Carol Van Driel-Murray, through dozens of experiments Connolly evolved a full-size reconstruction replicating and explaining every stitching hole, stretch and wear mark on the leather fragments, and corresponding to the ancient images. The resulting four-pommel saddle looks strange to modern eyes, but proves highly effective, offering a secure seat even without stirrups, as Connolly demonstrated by riding it himself.Reconstructing the Roman saddle was just one of Connolly's many contributions to understanding the past, going beyond communicating ideas to generating original knowledge.

Because of his exceptional combination of skills (rigorous academic learning and talents with brush and pen are rarely combined in a single person), at the height of his abilities from the 1970s to the turn of the century he was in great demand from museums and heritage bodies to paint reconstructions of people and places to grace exhibitions and for posters and postcards. Connolly was a lively speaker, sought by television companies needing a "talking head" for documentaries. He had a profound impact on a popular aspect of the heritage industry: "living history". The many Roman military re-enactment societies across Europe and beyond owe a great deal to the detail and authenticity of Connolly's books. He worked especially closely with the oldest and most respected group, the Ermine Street Guard, becoming their president.

Today his books are found in schools and libraries, and his work has inspired not only historical re-enactors, but also a new generation of archaeological researchers, especially those studying the Roman military.

Connolly was twice married and twice divorced, but in his latter years remained close to his second wife, Barbara, who supported him through his long final illness.

He leaves a son and two daughters by his first marriage.

Peter Connolly, illustrator, author, historian and archaeologist, was born on May 8, 1935. He died on May 2, 2012, aged 76.