At 79, 'Matilda' Artist Is Having a Moment Growing up reading - and being read - the stories of Roald Dahl, generations of children have created for themselves various iterations of the wonderful, wild and often wicked worlds of the author's books. Using his playful, evocative words, we've spun images of the Witches and the Twits, Matilda and the Big Friendly Giant (or B.F.G.) and the fantastical lands in which they lived. Sometimes we were on our own in these efforts of imagination, but often enough, we were helped along by Quentin Blake, the enormously talented illustrator and frequent Dahl collaborator who provided the drawings that accompanied 13 of the author's original books. At once knowing and naïve, Blake's artwork served as the perfect complement to Dahl's dark but delightful literary leanings. Now about to turn 80, and still working, Blake is the subject of a new show at London's Marlborough Fine Art, where some 50 drawings and watercolors, along with 15 lithographs and etchings, will be on display and for sale (prices range from £400 to £800) from Dec. 12 to Jan. 11. Completed in the last year, this recent body of never-before-seen work represents a rather personal project for the artist, one derived entirely from his own imaginings and observations of the sometimes joyous, sometimes melancholy, always ambiguous relationships between old and young, friends and family, humans and the natural world. The Marlborough exhibition caps an autumn in which Blake's work has experienced an unmistakable renaissance: Random House's Jonathan Cape imprint released "The Quentin Blake Treasury," an anthology of nine favorite children's tales that Blake illustrated and wrote. And Red Fox will rerelease several more individual classics - "Jack and Nancy," "Quentin Blake's ABC" and "Quentin Blake's Nursery Rhyme Book" - in the United States this spring. And of course the rediscovery of Blake comes at a time when Dahl's work has experienced a resurgence in the pubic consciousness: a musical based on "Matilda" landed in London last year and went on to set a record at April's Laurence Olivier Awards (the British equivalent of the Tonys) where it won seven top prizes. The show comes to Broadway in March, just two months before a musical adaptation of "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" will make its West End debut in London. Directed by Sam Mendes, the adaptation has lyrics and music by the "Hairspray" duo Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman - so that record set by "Matilda" may not last very long at all. Marlborough Fine Art is at 6 Albemarle Street, London; 011-44-207-629-5161; marlboroughfineart.com.