DICTIONARY
OF
NATIONAL BIOGRAPHY
SECOND SUPPLEMENT
ABBEY, EDWIN AUSTIN (1852–1911), painter and black-and-white and decorative artist, born on 1 April 1852 at 315 Race Street, Philadelphia, was eldest child in the family of two sons and a daughter of William Maxwell Abbey (1827–1897), a merchant of Philadelphia. His mother, Margery Ann (1825–1880), was daughter of Jacob Kipel, second son of Jacob Kypel (d. 1797), a farmer who emigrated to America from Freiburg, Baden, in 1760.
Abbey received his education in Philadelphia at the Randolph school (1862–4) and Dr. Gregory's school (1864–8), where he had drawing lessons from Isaac L. Williams of the Pennsylvania Academy, a landscape painter of local repute; for three months in 1868 he studied penmanship at Richard S. Dickson's writing-school. While there he contributed picture puzzles to Oliver Optic's ‘Our Boys and Girls’ under the pseudonym of ‘Yorick.’ In 1869 he entered the employ of Van Ingen and Snyder, wood-engravers of Philadelphia, who sent him to work in the antique and life classes at the Academy of Fine Arts. He was employed mainly on commercial and news illustrations. Soon afterwards he studied under Professor Christian Schuessèle at the Pennsylvania Academy and worked on historical compositions. The experience developed his power of imagination and faculty for design, while he applied himself to research in history and costume. In 1870 he sent drawings to the New York publishing house of Harper & Brothers for production in their ‘Weekly.’ In 1871 he went to New York, and after a month's probation in that firm's art department received a permanent position on the staff. He worked for Harpers continuously for twenty years.
In 1878 he came to England with a commission from Harpers to illustrate Herrick's poems. After two years he returned to New York for three months, and then settled permanently in England. He lived much in London, with country residences, first at Broadway, and then at Morgan Hall, Fairford, where he had a private cricket-ground. Latterly he purchased Woodcote Manor, previously occupied by Sir Francis Seymour Haden at Alresford, but did not live to occupy it. In London he acquired Chelsea Lodge, where he also worked much.
It was with his pen-and-ink illustrations that Abbey first conquered the English and American public. These appeared in editions of (among other works) Dickens's ‘Christmas Stories’ (1876); Herrick's poems (‘Hesperides’ and ‘Noble Numbers’) (1882); ‘She Stoops to Conquer’ (1887); ‘The Good-Natured Man; Old Songs’ (1889); ‘The Comedies of Shakespeare’ (1896)—132 illustrations which, by invitation, were exhibited at the Salon of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, Paris, 1896—and ‘The Tragedies of Shakespeare.’ In 1885 a sketching tour in Holland with his friend George Henry Boughton [q. v. Suppl. II] was commemorated in ‘Sketches and Rambles in Holland,’ to which both artists contributed drawings. His first
