Later Victorian Portraits Catalogue
George Louis Palmella Busson Du Maurier (1834-1896), Illustrator, cartoonist and novelist
- Gallery portraits
- All known portraits
- Biography and References
Illustrator, cartoonist and novelist; born 6 March 1834 in Paris, eldest child of Louis-Mathurin Busson Du Maurier, a Frenchman, scientist and inventor. Educated in France; scientific training at University College, London 1851–3; at Charles Gleyre’s studio, Paris 1856 where established friendships with Edward John Poynter and James McNeill Whistler; suffered detached retina in left eye while studying at Antwerp Academy 1857: ‘[Du Maurier] understood that he could not risk the remaining eye by continuing his career as a painter, and he turned instead to work as a black and white artist’;[1] occasional contributor to Punch from 1860, replaced John Leech as regular staff cartoonist 1864–96; highly successful magazine and book illustrator; exh. RA 1870–94 (with intervals); in late 1880s further weakening of eyesight – and encouragement from Henry James – directed him to writing; semi-autobiographical novels, illustrated and serialized, appeared in the 1890s including hugely successful Trilby (1894, causing rupture with Whistler); happily married from 1863, lived at New Grove House, Hampstead, 1874–95; died of heart disease on 8 October 1896, at 17 Oxford Square, Paddington, London.
His French parentage and education, and living at a short distance from London, provided Du Maurier with a sense of detachment useful for social commentary.
On first meeting Du Maurier in Paris c.1856, Thomas Armstrong (a fellow student at Gleyre’s) described him: ‘I can revive the picture of him in my mind’s eye, sitting astride one of the dingy Utrecht velvet chairs, with his elbows on the back, pale almost to sallowness, square-shouldered and very lean, with no hair on his face except a very slight moustache.’[2]
My sight, besides being defective in so many ways, is so sensitive that I cannot face the common light of day without glasses thickly rimmed with wire gauze.[3]
‘The fear of constant blindness beset me constantly,’ he said. It was a fear that clung to him; though by drawing to a large scale and by wearing those familiar goggles of dark glass, he fought the enemy line by line and kept it at bay.[4]
In the ’eighties and ’nineties Alma Tadema was at the height of his fame; he had lived most of his life in England but never lost a pronounced Dutch accent; every Tuesday evening he was At Home to his friends in his magnificent studio in Grove End Road […] ‘I don’t know how it is,’ Du Maurier said to me one afternoon, ‘but people always seem to mistake me for Tadema. Enthusiastic women come up to me at parties and say, “Oh, Mr. Tadema! I really must tell you! I do so adore your pictures! The way you represent marble! Oh, and roses – and everything! Too, too wonderful!”’ ‘And what do you do?’ I asked. ‘Always the same thing,’ he said with an impish twinkle. ‘I press their hands warmly and say, “Gom to me on my Chewsdays.”’[5]
Carol Blackett-Ord
His French parentage and education, and living at a short distance from London, provided Du Maurier with a sense of detachment useful for social commentary.
On first meeting Du Maurier in Paris c.1856, Thomas Armstrong (a fellow student at Gleyre’s) described him: ‘I can revive the picture of him in my mind’s eye, sitting astride one of the dingy Utrecht velvet chairs, with his elbows on the back, pale almost to sallowness, square-shouldered and very lean, with no hair on his face except a very slight moustache.’[2]
My sight, besides being defective in so many ways, is so sensitive that I cannot face the common light of day without glasses thickly rimmed with wire gauze.[3]
‘The fear of constant blindness beset me constantly,’ he said. It was a fear that clung to him; though by drawing to a large scale and by wearing those familiar goggles of dark glass, he fought the enemy line by line and kept it at bay.[4]
In the ’eighties and ’nineties Alma Tadema was at the height of his fame; he had lived most of his life in England but never lost a pronounced Dutch accent; every Tuesday evening he was At Home to his friends in his magnificent studio in Grove End Road […] ‘I don’t know how it is,’ Du Maurier said to me one afternoon, ‘but people always seem to mistake me for Tadema. Enthusiastic women come up to me at parties and say, “Oh, Mr. Tadema! I really must tell you! I do so adore your pictures! The way you represent marble! Oh, and roses – and everything! Too, too wonderful!”’ ‘And what do you do?’ I asked. ‘Always the same thing,’ he said with an impish twinkle. ‘I press their hands warmly and say, “Gom to me on my Chewsdays.”’[5]
Carol Blackett-Ord
Footnotesback to top
1) Ormond 2004.
2) Lamont 1912, pp.117–18. Millar 1937 is another good source on Du Maurier.
3) Kelly 1996, p32.
4) ILN, 17 Oct. 1896, p.517 (obits).
5) Guthrie 1934.
Referencesback to top
Bills & Knight 2006Bills, M., and V. Knight, eds, William Powell Frith: Painting the Victorian Age, London, 2006.
Bills & Webb 2007
Bills, M., and D. Webb, eds, Victorian Artists in Photographs: [The World of G.F. Watts]. Selections from the Rob Dickins Collection, exh. cat., Watts Gallery, Compton, 2007.
Cox & Ford 2003
Cox, J., and C. Ford, Julia Margaret Cameron: The Complete Photographs, London, 2003.
Downey & Downey 1890–94
Downey, W., and D. Downey, The Cabinet Portrait Gallery: Photographs by W. & D. Downey, 5 ser., London, 1890–94.
Du Maurier 1951
Du Maurier, D., ed., The Young George Du Maurier: A Selection of his Letters 1860–67, London, 1951.
Du Maurier 1897
Du Maurier, G., English Society, New York, 1897.
Furniss 1901
Furniss, H., Confessions of a Caricaturist, 2 vols, London, 1901.
Furniss [1919]
Furniss, H., My Bohemian Days, London, n.d. [1919]
Gallatin 1918
Gallatin, A.E., Portraits of Whistler: A Critical Study and an Iconography, London and New York, 1918.
Gaunt 1972
Gaunt, W., The Restless Century: Painting in Britain 1800–1900, London, 1972.
Guthrie 1934
Guthrie, T.A., ‘Some Personal Recollection of du Maurier’, supplement to Punch, 7 March 1934, n.p.
Hacking 2000
Hacking, J., Princes of Victorian Bohemia: Photographs by David Wilkie Wynfield, exh. cat., NPG, London, 2000.
Hillier 1975
Hillier, B., Victorian Studio Photographs from the Collections of Studio Bassano and Elliott & Fry, London, London, 1975.
Houfe 1996
Houfe, S., The Dictionary of 19th-Century British Book Illustrators and Caricaturists, Woodbridge, Suffolk, 1996 (rev. ed. of Houfe 1978).
Jopling 1925
Jopling, L., Twenty Years of My Life, 1867 to 1887, London, 1925.
Kelly 1996
Kelly, R., The Art of George du Maurier, Aldershot, 1996.
Lamont 1912
Lamont, L.M., ed., Thomas Armstrong, C.B.: A Memoir, London, 1912.
Maas 1984
Maas, J., The Victorian Art World in Photographs, London, 1984.
MacCarthy 2011
MacCarthy, F., The Last Pre-Raphaelite: Edward Burne-Jones and the Victorian Imagination, London, 2011.
McMaster 2008
McMaster, J., ‘That Mighty Art of Black-and-White: Linley Sambourne, Punch and the Royal Academy’, British Art Journal, Autumn 2008, pp.62–76.
McMaster 2009
McMaster, J., That Mighty Art of Black-and-White: Linley Sambourne, Punch and the Royal Academy, Edmonton, Canada, 2009.
Millais 1899
Millais, J.G., The Life and Letters of Sir John Everett Millais, 2 vols, London, 1899.
Millar 1937
Millar, C.C.H., George Du Maurier and Others, London, 1937.
Moscheles 1896
Moscheles, F., In Bohemia with Du Maurier, London, 1896.
O’Donoghue 1908–22
O’Donoghue, F., Catalogue of Engraved British Portraits preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum, 5 vols, London, 1908–22 (and vol.6, Supplement and indexes, 1925).
Ormond 1969
Ormond, L., George Du Maurier, London, 1969.
Ormond 2004
Ormond, L., ‘Du Maurier, George Louis Palmella Busson (1834–1896)’, ODNB, Oxford, 2004; online ed. October 2008.
Snow 1975
Snow, C.P., Trollope, London, 1975.
Spielmann 1895a
Spielmann, M.H., The History of Punch, London, 1895.
Walery 1888–92
Walery [Stanislas Julian, Count Ostrorog], ed., Our Celebrities: A Portrait Gallery … Portraits by Walery, 5 vols (vol.1 ed. L. Engel), London, 1888–96.
Ward 1915
Ward, L., Forty Years of ‘Spy’, London, 1915.
Whiteley 1948
Whiteley, D. Pepys, George Du Maurier, London, 1948.
Wood 1976
Wood, C., Victorian Panorama: Paintings of Victorian Life, London, 1976.
Wood 2006
Wood, C., William Powell Frith: A Painter & His World, Stroud, Glos., 2006.