At the age of 20, John Tenniel was seriously wounded by his father’s foil, which had lost its protective tip, while they were practicing fencing. He never told his father of the severity of the wound, as he did not wish to upset him and, over the years, Tenniel gradually lost the sight in his right eye. [1]
Sir John Tenniel was an English illustrator and artist prominent in the late 19th century. Much of his fame stems from his illustrations for Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871).
One of 5 siblings, Tenniel was born on 28 February 1820, in London, England, to John Baptist Tenniel, a fencing and dance instructor, and his wife, Eliza a singer. From a young age, Tenniel showed an aptitude for drawing, and he received formal art training at the British Royal Academy, exhibiting his first work in 1836 when he was 16. Tenniel struggled to establish himself as an artist and eventually turned to illustration as a more stable source of income. He was largely self-taught as an illustrator and cartoonist.
In 1850, he was hired as a staff illustrator for the newly launched magazine Punch and quickly became the magazine’s principal political cartoonist, producing hundreds of cartoons over the course of his career. His drawings were notable for their sharp wit, biting social commentary, and technical precision.
It was Tenniel’s illustrations for Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland that truly made him a household name. Introduced to Carroll in 1864, Tenniel agreed to create 42 illustrations after reading the manuscript. Carroll supplied very specific instructions concerning every aspect of the work and only liked one in the original series, the drawing of Humpty Dumpty. This resulted in much debate with Carroll and delayed the printing of the book. After initially turning him down, Tenniel eventually agreed to illustrate Carroll’s second book, and Through the Looking Glass was finally published after numerous delays in 1871. The difficult relationship between Tenniel and Carroll did not improve, and when these projects were finished in 1872, Tenniel abandoned literary illustration. His drawings for both books have become some of the most famous of literary illustrations.
Tenniel was knighted by Queen Victoria in 1893 for his contributions to the field of illustration, the first such honour ever bestowed on an illustrator or cartoonist. He died on 25 February 1914, aged 93, nearly half a century after Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was published.