Life
1860-1920; b. Coleraine, June 1860; ed. Model School; first worked for
Marcus and Ward, Belfast; moved to London, 1883 and began working in London
for Macmillan and the English Illustrated Magazine; 70 books incl.
Jane Austen novels from 1894; ill. Sir Roger de Coverley (1886);
The Vicar of Wakefield (Macmillan 1890), with 180 ills. by him;
; other English classics including Thackeray, George Eliot, Dickens, J.
M. Barrie; also, Maria Edgeworth, and Mrs. Gatskill’s Cranford,
etc. Illustrated for the Graphic. d. Wandsworth Common; plaque
in Coleraine; Flowerfield lecture by Phil Tilling. etc.; d. May 1920;
exhibition at Leicester Galleries, London, 1923; also Linen Hall, Belfast,
1970; copious work in Pearl Pictorial, Graphic, and Pall
Mall Gazette; collab. with Stephen Gwynn on Highways and Byways;
The Fair Hills of Ireland; The Famous Cities of Ireland;
Hugh Thomson, sale of work at Ross Auction, Belfast, April 2001. DIB
Works
The Ballad of Beau Brocade, for Austin Dobson (1892);
ills. for School for Scandal [1911], and Famous Cities of
Ireland (Dublin: Maunsel 1915), xx, 352pp.; also [inter al.], Shanachie,
An Irish Miscellany Illustrated (1906-1907).
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Criticism
M. H. Spielman & Walter Jerrold, Hugh Thomson: His Art, His Letters,
His Humour and His Charm (1931) 269pp.
Notes
Stephen Gwynn wrote, ‘If ever I wanted to prove that Belfast,
and Protestant Belfast, is irrevocably Irish, I should have to produce
Hugh Thomson.’
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)