Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Thomson, Hugh
THOMSON, HUGH (1860–1920), illustrator and pen-and-ink draughtsman, was born 1 June 1860 at Coleraine, co. Londonderry, the eldest son of John Thomson, who was in a tea-merchant's business in Coleraine, by his wife, Catherine, daughter of James Andrews. He was educated at the Model School, Coleraine, and first entered a firm of linen-manufacturers; but showing an aversion from commerce and a talent for design he was placed with the publishing firm of Marcus Ward & Co., of Belfast. There he came under the influence of John Vinycomb, a member of the Royal Irish Academy, whose counsel was the only real art training that he ever received. In 1883 he removed to London. Thomson's natural ability was quickly recognized by Joseph William Comyns Carr, editor of the then newly-established English Illustrated Magazine. In June 1884 his work first appeared in its pages, and he soon became one of its leading illustrators. Here first appeared his Sir Roger de Coverley (1886), and Coaching Days and Coaching Ways (1888). His drawings showed not only a delightful skill in landscape work but a consummate knowledge of horses, and a keen sense of humour. His early indebtedness to the art of Randolph Caldecott [q.v.] was obvious, but by degrees he developed an original talent.
For Messrs. Macmillan, the proprietors of the English Illustrated Magazine, to whom he was greatly attached both as artist and friend throughout the whole of his career, Thomson illustrated, between the years 1884 and 1903, a long series of books, eighteen in number, besides twelve volumes in their well-known county series, Highways and Byways, alone or in collaboration (1897–1920). He illustrated also with exquisite charm and grace many of the English classics of humour, beginning with Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield (1890), Mrs. Gaskell's Cranford (1891)—which was declared to be ‘the book of the year’—and Mary Mitford's Our Village (1893). In 1894 he developed his delicate taste for sylvan scenery in Coridon's Song. Then, after William Somerville's The Chase (1896), followed a series of Jane Austen's novels—Sense and Sensibility (1896), and Emma, Mansfield Park, Northanger Abbey, and Persuasion, all in 1897; Pride and Prejudice he had already illustrated for Messrs. Allen in 1894. He continued with Fanny Burney's Evelina (1903), Thackeray's Henry Esmond (1905), George Eliot's Scenes from Clerical Life (1906) and Silas Marner (1907). He also illustrated The Ballad of Beau Brocade (1892) and The Story of Rosina (1895), both by Austin Dobson [q.v.], to whose help, encouragement, and friendship Thomson owed much of his early success. Among the other books with which he sustained his popularity were Charles Reade's Peg Woffington (1899), James Lane Allen's The Kentucky Cardinal (1900), and Mrs. Mabel Henrietta Spielmann's My Son and I (1908). He also supplied coloured illustrations for As You Like It (1909), The Merry Wives of Windsor (1910), The School for Scandal (1911), She Stoops to Conquer (1912), Dickens's The Chimes (1913), as well as for Sir James Barrie's Quality Street (1913) and The Admirable Crichton (1914), Hughes's Tom Brown's Schooldays (1918), and Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter (1920). In all these he showed a fine appreciation of his author's point of view, together with much character and imagination of his own. Thomson did much work for the leading illustrated journals, mainly The Graphic, being usually called upon for pictures of the dainty graces and foibles, as well as of the sports, of seventeenth-and eighteenth-century and early Victorian society.
Thomson was much hampered by indifferent health, which, allied to his natural modesty, prevented him from mixing much with the world. His life was happy, with little incident, sweetened by the devoted attachment of a small circle who appreciated his worth and nobility of character. Extreme conscientiousness—he destroyed much of his work as soon as drawn—prevented him from making a competency, but a Civil List pension eased his lot in his declining years. He died at his home on Wandsworth Common, of heart disease, 7 May 1920. He married in 1884 Jessie Naismith, daughter of Peter Miller, of Ballynafeigh, Belfast, by whom he had one son.
[Life, by M. H. Spielmann (in preparation); private information; personal knowledge.]