was born in Kensington 28 February 1820. He was educated at a private school in Kensington and received his first training as an artist at the Academy Schools. He did not remain long at the schools as he was dissatisfied with their teaching, but he afterwards joined the Clipstone Street Life Academy in Fitzroy Square, where he studied both the antique and the nude with Charles Keene [q.v.], his lifelong friend. He also attended anatomy lectures and studied the Elgin marbles and other sculpture at the British Museum. His interest in costume and armour was encouraged by Sir Frederic Madden [q.v.] of the manuscripts department of the Museum; and Tenniel now laid the foundation of a wide knowledge of both subjects which proved of great service to him in after years. In 1836, at the age of sixteen, he exhibited and sold an oil-picture at the Society of British Artists in Suffolk Street, and in the following year he began to exhibit at the Royal Academy. In 1845 he was successful in a cartoon competition for Westminster Hall and received a commission to execute a fresco (illustrating Dryden's ‘St. Cecilia’) in the House of Lords. For this purpose he went to Munich to study the process of fresco.
The year 1848 marks the turning-point in Tenniel's career. His illustrations to the Rev. Thomas James's version of Æsop's Fables, which appeared in this year, attracted considerable attention, and it was largely owing to this book that Mark Lemon [q.v.], at that time editor of Punch, invited Tenniel to join the staff in December 1850. The paper had been left in great straits by the sudden desertion of Richard Doyle [q.v.], the second cartoonist, and at the suggestion of Douglas Jerrold [q.v.]. Tenniel was asked to take his place. As John Leech [q.v.], the first cartoonist, was still in his full vigour, Tenniel was at first mainly employed on fanciful initials, decorative borders, &c. His earliest cartoon, representing Lord John Russell as Jack the Giant-Killer advancing to attack Cardinal Wiseman, appeared in 1851. For some time he was not particularly successful as a cartoonist, but his reputation gradually increased owing to cartoons such as ‘The British Lion's Vengeance on the Bengal Tiger’ (1857); and in 1862 he began to contribute a weekly cartoon. When Leech died in 1864, Tenniel succeeded him as first cartoonist.
After 1864 Tenniel left London for scarcely more than a week for thirty years, with the exception of a short visit to Venice in 1878. During his fifty years' work on the staff of Punch he drew considerably over two thousand cartoons, rarely missing through absence or illness his regular contribution. His last cartoon appeared on 2 January 1901, immediately preceding his retirement. On the last occasion when he attended the weekly Punch dinner the customary course of proceedings was interrupted for him to receive a presentation from his colleagues. On 12 June in the same year a public dinner was given in his honour, at which the prime minister, Mr. (afterwards the Earl of) Balfour presided over a distinguished gathering. The warmth of Tenniel's reception was such that it overwhelmed him, and he broke down in attempting to reply to the toast of his health.
It would be impossible to enumerate here even the most striking of Tenniel's cartoons: two of the most notable were ‘Dropping the Pilot’ (1890), referring to the resignation of Bismarck, and ‘Who said “Atrocities”?’ (1895), showing Gladstone, as a terrier, indignant at the Armenian revelations. Several volumes of his cartoons have been published. Cartoons from ‘Punch’ (1864, second series 1870) was followed by Cartoons from ‘Punch’, volume i, 1871–1881, volume ii, 1882–1891 (1895), while in 1901, after his retirement, a volume was issued, entitled Cartoons by Sir John Tenniel, selected from the pages of ‘Punch’, covering the whole period of his work.
For the remaining years of his life Tenniel lived in retirement at Kensington. In 1874 he had been elected a member of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours, and in 1893 he was knighted. He died at his Kensington home 25 February 1914, within three days of his ninety-fourth birthday. Early in life Tenniel married a Miss Giani, who died two years later. They had no children.
It was said of Tenniel that ‘it has been his mission, without sacrificing one iota of real power or true form, to purify parody and ennoble caricature’. He was not, indeed, a caricaturist in the usual sense of the term. Still less was he a libellist or a lampoonist. Through fifty years it was his mission to shoot at folly, to strike at fraud and corruption, to touch with delicate though firm hand the political problems of the hour. This task he accomplished with unfailing fancy and with a delightful humour which never degenerated into coarseness nor was lacking in dignity. Tenniel was never carried away by private feeling. His aim was to
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