1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Doyle, Richard

DOYLE, RICHARD (1824–1883), English artist, son of John Doyle, the caricaturist known as “H. B.” (1797–1868), was born in London in 1824. His father’s “Political Sketches” took the town by storm in the days of Lord Grey and Lord Melbourne. The son was an extremely precocious artist, and in his “Home for the Holidays,” done when he was twelve, and his “Comic English Histories,” drawn four years later, he showed extraordinary gifts of humour and fancy. He had no art training outside his father’s studio. In 1843 he joined the staff of Punch, drawing cartoons and a vast number of illustrations, but he retired in 1850, in consequence of the attitude adopted by that paper towards what was known as “the papal aggression,” and especially towards the pope himself. In 1854 he published his “Continental Tour of Brown, Jones and Robinson.” His illustrations to three of the Christmas Books of Charles Dickens, and to The Newcomes by Thackeray, are reckoned among his principal achievements; and his fanciful pictures of elves and fairies have always been general favourites. He died on the 11th of December 1883. His most popular drawing is his cover of Punch.