Monday 12 December 2011

Tom Browne

Tom Browne was a very well known and influential late Victorian/Early Edwardian cartoonist and illustrator whose fame hasn’t really carried through to today. His work appeared in the Sketch, Graphic, Tatler and Punch, however his best remembered work is probably Weary Willie and Tired Tim, a comic strip about a couple of tramps inspired by the adventures of Don Quixote that appeared in Illustrated Chips and ran for 60 years (50 after the artist’s death).

Browne was born in Nottingham in 1872 and, as an artist, was almost entirely self-taught - although he was heavily influenced by Phil May (with whom he was later to co-found the London Sketch Club). He moved to London in his early twenties and was elected to the Royal Society of British Artists and, later, the Royal Institute of Painters. He died in 1910 at the age of 38.

The following strips come from Tom Browne’s Comic Annual from, I think, 1904 and, appropriately, features his two favourite characters, Don Quixote and his Sancho.







For more on Tom Browne see:

http://lewstringer.blogspot.com/2010/03/tribute-to-tom-browne.html
http://britishgoldenagecomics.4t.com/custom2.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Browne_%28illustrator%29

Monday 5 December 2011

Welcome...

...to my new blog where I'll be posting some of my sketches, cartoons and ramblings on a relatively erratic basis. Much like my old blog really, just with a new title. I'm going to begin with some recent odds and ends. Hope you like these and the ones that will follow.





This last one is a copy of a figure in a mural by the fantastic German illustrator Ulf K (the original can be seen here).