John Tenniel

Sir John Tenniel (28 February 1820 – 25 February 1914) worked as an English illustrator, graphic humourist, and political cartoonist, and was a major figure in the latter half of the 19th century. He studied at London’s Royal Academy of Arts, and in 1893 became the first illustrator or cartoonist ever to receive a knighthood for artistic work. The Victoria and Albert Museum notes that his “intelligent, detailed style elevated the fame and standing of cartoonists immeasurably.”

Tenniel is best known for his work at *Punch* magazine, where he spent over fifty years. He joined the satirical publication in 1850 and became its chief cartoonist in 1864. He also created the illustrations for the first editions of Lewis Carroll’s *Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland* (1865) and *Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There* (1871). His detailed black-and-white drawings have become the definitive images of the Alice characters. As comic book illustrator and writer Bryan Talbot put it, “Carroll never describes the Mad Hatter: our image of him is pure Tenniel.”

Tenniel was born in Bayswater, west London, to John Baptist Tenniel, a fencing and dancing master of Huguenot descent, and Eliza Maria Tenniel. He had five siblings: two brothers and three sisters. One sister, Mary, later married Thomas Goodwin Green, the pottery owner who produced Cornishware. Tenniel was quiet and introverted as a boy and as an adult, staying out of the limelight and seeming unaffected by competition or change. His biographer Rodney Engen wrote that Tenniel’s “life and career was that of the supreme gentlemanly outsider, living on the edge of respectability.”

In 1840, while practising fencing, Tenniel received a serious eye wound from his father’s foil, which had accidentally lost its protective tip. Over time he gradually lost sight in his right eye, but never told his father how severe the injury was, not wanting to upset him further. Despite a tendency toward high art, Tenniel was already known as a humourist. His early friendship with Charles Keene helped develop his talent for scholarly caricature.

Tenniel became a student at the Royal Academy of Arts in 1842 by probation, admitted after making enough copies of classical sculptures to fill the required portfolio. He disagreed with the school’s teaching methods, so he educated himself. He studied classical sculptures through painting but was frustrated by a lack of drawing instruction. He drew classical statues at London’s Townley Gallery, copied illustrations from books of costumes and armour at the British Museum, drew animals at the zoo in Regent’s Park, and sketched actors from the pits of London theatres. These studies taught him to love detail, but he became impatient in his work and was happiest drawing from memory. Though he had a photographic memory, it undermined his early formal training and restricted his artistic ambitions. In the mid-1840s he joined the Artist’s Society, or Clipstone Street Life Academy, where he first emerged as a satirical draughtsman.

Tenniel’s first book illustration appeared in 1842 for Samuel Carter Hall’s *The Book of British Ballads*. Around the same time, London held competitions to combat the growing Germanic Nazarenes style and promote a national English school of art. Tenniel planned to enter the 1845 House of Lords competition for designing mural decorations in the new Palace of Westminster. Though he missed the deadline, he submitted a 16-foot cartoon, *An Allegory of Justice*, to a competition for the mural designs. He received a £200 premium and a commission to paint a fresco in the Upper Waiting Hall (or Hall of Poets) in the House of Lords.

As chief cartoonist for *Punch*, Tenniel witnessed Britain’s sweeping changes and furthered political and social reform through satirical, often radical, and sometimes vitriolic images. At Christmas 1850, Mark Lemon invited him to fill the position of joint cartoonist (with John Leech) on *Punch*, based on his recent illustrations for *Aesop’s Fables*. His first drawing appeared in the initial letter on page 224, volume 19, titled “Lord Jack the Giant Killer,” showing Lord John Russell attacking Cardinal Wiseman. Tenniel’s first characteristic lion appeared in 1852, as did his first obituary cartoon. He gradually took over the weekly political “big cut,” which Leech happily ceded to focus on pictures of life and character. In 1861, Tenniel was offered Leech’s position as political cartoonist but still maintained decorum and restraint on heated issues. When Leech died in 1864, Tenniel continued alone, rarely missing a week. He followed the choices of his *Punch* editors, who likely took cues from *The Times* and felt political tensions from Parliament. His work could be scathing, addressing working-class radicalism, labour, war, and economic issues.