Visual Storyteller Illustrator of ‘Alice in Wonderland’ and cartoonist for ‘Punch’ Magazine
It was an inspired choice to select John Tenniel (later, Sir John Tenniel) as the first illustrator of Lewis Carroll’s creative masterpieces – ‘Alice in Wonderland’, first published in 1865, and ‘Alice through the Looking Glass’, which was released in 1872. For many people, these children’s book illustrations, still much admired for their liveliness, design, craftsmanship and whimsical touches, are all they know of Tenniel’s work – but he was well practiced and already famous by the time he drew them.
At the start of his career as an artist, his first love was painting, and London galleries were exhibiting his canvases when he was only 16, in 1836. He was so accomplished, it was hardly surprising that when he trained at the Royal Academy, he found the quality of tuition inadequate and chose not to complete his studies there.
Having established his reputation, commissions followed – including a fresco for the House of Lords.
When Tenniel submitted occasional cartoons to ‘Punch’, his ability to draw people soon lead to him being offered a permanent post as a ‘political cartoonist’ for the magazine. Thinking of himself as a ‘fine-artist’ and not witty, he was disinclined at first, but was finally persuaded to join the staff in 1850, when he was 30, and he stayed until retiring at the age of 80.
Artists work in many different ways. Most sketch and keep ‘visual diaries’. When they want to draw or paint the folds in clothes, they use a ‘model’ – either a living person wearing them, or fabric hung in their studio, in the shape they wish to draw – or these days, they take photographs or look at pictures on the internet. Tenniel was different. He had a photographic memory and never made sketches or used photographs, fabrics or models to remind him of his subject – though from time to time he would arrange a meeting with a politician so that he could closely study their features. The accuracy of the likenesses he drew in his cartoons was uncanny.
I don’t have ready access to all the early additions of Punch, so the examples I’ve scanned have been chosen from ‘Punch Almanacks’ from 1850 – 1886, which I own.
Every Wednesday, Tenniel would be told the subject for his weekly cartoon. Thursday was ‘thinking day’ – and he also drew some rough page plans and ideas. Friday was set aside for working feverishly to create the final drawing, trace it on to a wooden printing-block and add details. At 5.30 pm, Joseph Swain’s boy assistant would arrive to collect the block, though sometimes he had to wait an hour or more. Swain spent the next day engraving it. The wood-block would then be ready for embedding in the rest of the text and cartoons, and printing. Tenniel received his sample copy of the magazine late on Monday, but was always too anxious to open it himself, so his sister was the first to see the finished results.
The political satires drawn by Tenniel had immense effect, changing politicians’ policies and causing the downfall and election of parties, but his illustrations for the Almanacks also show his skills as a visual storyteller.
Like the strip cartoons and graphic novels of today, some pages depict a story as a sequence of events. The adventures of ‘Spriggins’ was a running joke over many years of ‘Punch’, and this page depicts his choice to go hunting, not on horseback, but on his tricycle. I’m sure children would have been shown cartoons such as this, and laughed at them: