Richard Doyle (illustrator)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

An illustration from In Fairyland 1870

Richard "Dickie" Doyle (September 1824 – 11 December 1883) was a notable Victorian illustrator. His work frequently appeared, amongst other places, in Punch magazine; he drew the cover of the first issue, and designed the magazine's masthead, a design that was used for over a century.^[1]

The son of John Doyle (known as 'H.B'), a noted political caricaturist,^[2] he had two brothers James and Charles, who were also both artists. The young Doyle had no formal art training other than his father's studio, but from an early age displayed a gifted ability to depict scenes of the fantastic and grotesque. Throughout his life he was fascinated by fairy tales. He joined the staff of Punch in 1843 aged 19, remaining there for seven years until resigning in order to concentrate on book illustration and painting.

Doyle collaborated with John Leech, W.C. Stanfield and other artists to co-illustrate three Dickens Christmas books, The Chimes (1844), The Cricket on the Hearth (1845) and The Battle of Life (1846).^[3]

In 1846 Doyle's illustrations for The Fairy Ring (a new translation of Grimm's tales), first made his name as a fairytale illustrator. Following this in 1849 he produced Fairy Tales from All Nations (compiled by 'Anthony R. Montalba' (i.e. Anthony Whitehall), which proved a tremendous success. Doyle was able to fully explore his love of fairy mythology with his many illlustrations and borders filled with elves, pixies and other mythical creatures.

Following this success Doyle illustrated a string of fantasy titles: The Enchanted Doll by Mark Lemon (1849), The Story of Jack and the Giants (1850), and John Ruskin's The King of the Golden River (1850), which went through three editions in its first year of publication.

His masterpiece is undoubtably In Fairyland, a series of Pictures from the Elf World, with a poem by William Allingham, printed by Edmund Evans and published by Longman in time for Christmas 1869 (dated 1870). In the 16 colour plates and 36 line illustrations plus title page, Doyle was given a completely free hand. The folio was richly bound in green cloth, and has been described as one of the finest examples of Victorian book production (Richard Dalby, The Golden Age of Children's Book Illustration, 1991 p.12).

He was the uncle of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author of the Sherlock Holmes stories.^[4]