1850
fresco 2.5 x 1.8 m
(8ft 1in x 5ft 9in)
Upper Waiting Hall,Palace of Westminster,London (mk63)
John Tenniel
English Golden Age Cartoonist and Illustrator.
(1820-1914)
English illustrator and painter. Impatient with the hierarchic structure of the curriculum at the Royal Academy schools in London, he left to follow a less formal education at the Clipstone Street Art Society's life and anatomy classes and in the British Museum's sculpture galleries and Print Room. His research into the history of costume and armour provided material for his early oils of chivalric scenes, which he exhibited at the Royal Academy (1837-42, 1851). Tenniel was among the artists commissioned to decorate the New Palace of Westminster, and he went in 1845 on a state-sponsored trip to Munich to study fresco technique. His contact with the school of Peter Cornelius while there confirmed his emphatic preference for a precisely drawn line.
