Detail from The Canal, Amsterdam, 1889, James McNeill Whistler, The Hunterian, University of Glasgow

Home 

Edward Linley Sambourne

Nationality: English
Date of birth: 1844
Place of birth: 15 Lloyd Square, Pentonville
Date of death: 1910.08.03
Place of death: 18 Stafford Terrace, Kensington, London
Category: cartoonist

Identity:

Edward Linley Sambourne, Punch caricaturist. He married Marion Herapath (1851-1914), the daughter of a wealthy stokebroker, on 20 October 1874. Their children were Maud (born 1875) and Roy (1878-1946). Linley died from heart disease in 1910.

Life:

Sambourne was a Punch cartoonist and designer, who started his 43 year career with Punch magazine in 1867. He often used photographs of his family and servants as well as life models. He exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1875. He was a member of the Arts Club (of which Whistler was also a member) from 1878 to 1896.

He illustrated an 1882 edition of The Water Babies by Charles Kingsley, using his children as models for Tom and Ellie. His later models for photographs included the Pettigrew sisters, who also posed for Whistler, in the 1890s.

The Sambournes lived at 18 Stafford Terrace, Kensington from 1874; the house and its fashionable 'aesthetic' decoration has been preserved from the 1870s and is now a museum open to the public. They also had a home at Westwood Lodge, Isle of Thanet, Kent from 1878.

Bibliography:

Records of The Arts Club, London; The Annual Register, 1910, p. 133; Bénézit, E., Dictionnaire des Peintres, Sculpteurs, Dessinateurs et Graveurs, 8 vols, Paris, 1956-61; Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford, 2004; Nicholson, Shirley (ed.), A Victorian household, based on the diaries of Marion Sambourne, London, 1988; Linley Sambourne House website.