Richard Doyle was born in September 1824 and died December 11, 1883. An English caricaturist, water colorist, and illustrator. He was the son and pupil
of John Doyle, a popular caricaturist. His Journal (British Mus.), a book of sketches done at the age 15, shows his extraordinary precocity. He worked on the staff of Punch (1843-50), and drew the
famous cover design. Doyle illustrated some of Thackeray's works.
His chief series of illustrations were those for "The Newcomes", "The King of the Golden River", "In Fairyland", and "The Foreign Tour of Brown, Jones and Robinson". His water color drawings were marked by much poetic feeling, and were executed in harmonious low-toned schemes of color. His genius has been well described as "kindly, frolicsome, graceful, and sportive". He was full of imagination and delighted in romantic fancy, while his caricatures are exquisitely drawn, amusing and graceful, lacking perhaps the strength of his father's works but far exceeding them in charm and in quality of amusement. There are many of his drawings in the British Museum, and some of his sketch-books are in the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge.
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 illustrations 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 undoubtedly 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 color 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).
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Copyright:1986-2008