Frederic Villiers (1851–1922), British war artist and correspondent.
Along with William Simpson and Melton Prior, Villiers was one of the most notable 'special' artists of the later 19th century. He may have been the model for the Kipling war-artist character, Dick Heldar in The Light that Failed.
Born in London on 23 April 1851, he was educated in France at Guînes situated in the Pas-de-Calais. Between 1869 and 1870, he was an art student at the British Museum and in South Kensington, and in the following year at the Royal Academy Schools. In 1876 while walking down Holborn, he noticed a crowd reading a poster of an evening paper stating that Serbia had declared war on Turkey. He immediately decided to contact the paper, The Graphic, offering his services as a war artist. The paper took him up on his offer and it was the beginning of a long career covering wars and conflicts around the globe.
Having reported on the Russo-Turkish War in 1877 and witnessed the events at Plevna, he traveled to Afghanistan to cover the war that had broken out in 1878. Here he befriended Pierre Louis Napoleon Cavagnari who gave the artist the pens that were used to sign the Treaty of Gandamak. A world cruise followed in which he visited India where he dined with the Viceroy, Lord Lytton at Simla, Sydney, Tasmania, Auckland, Honolulu and San Francisco, and in 1882 was in Egypt to cover the war; he was present at Tel-el-Kebir. The following year saw him in Russia to cover the coronation but he was soon back in North Africa, this time to provide sketches of the fighting in Sudan during the Gordon relief expedition. He covered conflicts in Bulgaria in 1886, the Burma war of 1887, the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95 including the massacres of Chinese at Port Arthur, and a decade later, the Greek-Turkish War.
In 1898, he was one of the artists sent to cover the campaign in Sudan which culminated at Omdurman. Villiers brought along an early cine-camera and was filming when an explosion caused the boat to rock in the Nile, tipping over the apparatus. His other campaigns included the Boer War where he accompanied the Kimberley Relief Column, the Russo-Japanese War and the First World War. He was particularly frustrated during the opening months of the latter for not being allowed to go near the front.
Villiers worked primarily for The Graphic but also supplied illustrations to 'Black and White' as well as serving as a special correspondent of The Standard; he also contributed illustrations to the English Illustrated Magazine and The Idler. He counted among his friends, Archibald Forbes, and John Cameron who was killed in the Gordon Relief Expedition; he was also a friend of the Prince of Wales and was invited on at least one occasion to go hunting with the Prince in Scotland. Villiers exhibited two paintings at the Royal Academy, the first in 1882 entitled 'The road home; the return of an Imperial brigade from Afghanistan', and in the following year 'Fighting Arabi with his own weapons; an incident of the Battle of Tel el-Kebir'. Medals were presented to him including awards from Russia, Serbia, Roumania, the Khedive's Star, and the Order of Takova.
Villiers gave frequent illustrated lectures and published several autobiographical works describing his experiences at the front. He died on 3 April 1922.