George Du Maurier

Artist Info

George Du MaurierParis, 1834 - 1896, London

Du Maurier, George (English illustrator and writer, 1834-1896)

Biography:

Du Maurier, George Louis Palmella Busson (1834–1896), illustrator, cartoonist, and novelist, was born on 6 March 1834 at 80 Champs Elysées, Paris, and baptized in May 1835 at Rotherfield, Sussex, the eldest of the three children of Louis-Mathurin Busson Du Maurier (1797–1856) and his wife, Ellen Clarke (1797–1870). Louis-Mathurin Du Maurier, an improvident scientist and inventor, gave his son the name Palmella in a bid to attract the patronage of a Portuguese noble family. Louis-Mathurin was a Frenchman, Ellen Clarke an Englishwoman, and George Du Maurier's childhood was spent moving between France, England, and Belgium. This Anglo-French parentage set a pattern for the first part of his life and was to have a considerable effect on his future role as a satirist of Victorian middle- and upper-class society.

Family and education

Du Maurier's paternal grandfather claimed that he was an aristocrat, exiled to England during the French Revolution. His name had, however, been Busson, and he came from a family of glass-blowers working in La Sarthe in northern France. George Du Maurier never knew the truth, which was discovered only in 1962 by his granddaughter, the novelist Daphne Du Maurier. George Du Maurier's maternal grandmother, Mary-Anne Clarke, was a former lover of Frederick, duke of York, a son of George III. She had supplemented her income by selling military commissions, obtained through her lover, the commander-in-chief of the army. The money which she gained in a settlement from the duke eventually paid for George Du Maurier's art education. Du Maurier believed himself to be the grandson of the duke of York, but this, like his French aristocratic origins, was a fantasy. Mary-Anne Clarke did not meet the duke until after her daughter Ellen was born.

From 1835 to 1837 the Du Mauriers were living in Laeken, near Brussels, while Louis-Mathurin looked for work. In 1836, through Palmella influence, he became scientific adviser to the Portuguese embassy to Belgium. When he lost the post in 1837 the family lived in London for a time until, in 1839, the mother and children settled with Mary-Anne Clarke in Boulogne. Only in 1842 did they rejoin Louis-Mathurin in Paris where they lived in the village of Passy, then on the outskirts of the city. Du Maurier described these Passy years in his first novel, Peter Ibbetson, where he recalls his delight in the old Bois de Boulogne and in the park of St Cloud. Du Maurier later said that he had attended many schools. In Passy he was at the pension Pelieu, and in 1847 he enrolled at the pension Froussard in the avenue Bois de Boulogne. This involved a move away from Passy and into the city, where the Du Mauriers lived in the rue du Bac. The pension Froussard, thinly disguised, is the subject of the opening chapters of Du Maurier's third novel, The Martian.

Du Maurier failed the baccalauréat in 1851 but, at his father's insistence, he travelled to London in the same year to begin a scientific training at the Birkbeck Chemical Laboratory of University College, London. After two years there, his father set him up in his own laboratory for scientific analysis in Barge Yard, Bucklersbury. Du Maurier received only two commissions, one for the analysis of deposits in a Devonian mine, a post which came to an abrupt end when he declared that there was no gold. Du Maurier described this experience in a short story, ‘Recollections of an English Goldmine’, published in Once a Week in 1861.

On the death of his father in 1856, Du Maurier thankfully abandoned science and England, returning to Paris to become an art student. He had shown a talent for drawing from early childhood and was known for his sketches of people he met. From 1852 he had been drawing from classical sculpture in the British Museum. He now enrolled at the atelier of Charles Gleyre, later known as the master of several impressionist painters. Du Maurier lived at home with his mother and sister, first in the faubourg Poissonnière and then in Passy. He shared a studio with a group of English artists, Thomas Armstrong, Edward Poynter, and Thomas Reynolds Lamont. Among their friends was the American painter James McNeill Whistler. During this period Du Maurier sold a small oil painting of a scene from Walter Scott's Rob Roy, made a number of drawings from the life at Gleyre's atelier, and sketched his friends in the studio. This artist life in Paris was to provide the background of his second novel, Trilby.

In 1857 Du Maurier left Paris for Antwerp where he enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts under the tuition of Jacob Van Lerius, the professor of painting. The reasons for Du Maurier's move are not clear but he evidently believed that the Antwerp academy had more to offer a young painter. An oil painting of an old woman with a young boy in her lap, known only from a friend's drawing, suggests that he was now working in a realist style. Du Maurier had been three or four months in Antwerp when, during a session in the life class, he suddenly lost the sight of his left eye, almost certainly as the result of a detached retina. He moved to Mechelen and received treatment from a Jesuit priest who practised as an oculist in Louvain. Du Maurier had formed a friendship with another Antwerp art student, Felix Moscheles, son of the pianist, composer, and teacher Ignaz Moscheles, and Moscheles's account of life in Mechelen in his In Bohemia with George Du Maurier supplements Du Maurier's own version in The Martian.

The loss of sight in his left eye altered the course of Du Maurier's life. He understood that he could not risk the remaining eye by continuing his career as a painter, and he turned instead to work as an artist in black and white. In 1859 he moved to Düsseldorf in order to consult another doctor, Hofrath de Leeuwe. Once there, he became a student at the Düsseldorf Academy, to which Thomas Armstrong had also transferred. After a year Du Maurier returned to London, drawn by rumours of a demand for illustrators for books and magazines. He had also met his sister's friend Emma Wightwick (1840/41–1915), whom he was to marry on 3 January 1863, and the fact that she lived in London was another inducement to return there.

Book illustrations

In London, Du Maurier discovered that it was far more difficult than he had expected to find work. The development in black and white illustration which is generally associated with the 1860s was already underway, and a number of other artists, among them John Everett Millais, Frederick Sandys, and Frederick Walker, had established a firm hold on the most prestigious illustrated magazines of the period and on the Cornhill Magazine in particular. Du Maurier's first published woodcuts were accepted by Mark Lemon, the editor of Punch, and, between 1860 and 1864, he slowly began to establish himself on other magazines, among them Once a Week, London Society, the Cornhill, and the Leisure Hour. Having imagined that drawing for the woodblock would be easy, Du Maurier was shocked to have an illustration turned down. He then took advice from Frederick Sandys who told him to draw everything from life and not from the imagination and to create detailed landscapes for out of door scenes. The immediate result was Du Maurier's fine drawings for The Notting Hill Mystery and Santa, or, A Woman's Tragedy by the author of Agnes Tremorne, both published in Once a Week in 1862 and 1863.

Du Maurier continued to work as an illustrator for the rest of his life, although the volume of such work declined in the 1880s and 1890s. The best of his drawings were almost all made in the 1860s and, between 1863 and 1867, he worked on an eight-volume collected edition of the novels and stories of Elizabeth Gaskell, a novelist whom he particularly admired. Taken together, they probably represent his finest achievement as an illustrator of books. Among the other authors whose work he illustrated were Shirley Brooks, Sooner or Later (1868); Wilkie Collins, for whom he worked on four reissues, including The Moonstone and The Frozen Deep, in 1875; Thomas Hardy, The Hand of Ethelberta (Cornhill Magazine, 1875, and book publication, 1877) and A Laodicean (Harper's Magazine, 1880–81); Douglas Jerrold, The Story of a Feather (1867); George Meredith, The Adventures of Harry Richmond (Cornhill Magazine, 1870–71); Florence Montgomery, Misunderstood (1874); Margaret Oliphant, six stories and novels (Cornhill Magazine, 1868–76); Adelaide Proctor, Legends and Lyrics: Second Series (1866); Charles Reade and Dion Boucicault, Foul Play (Once a Week, 1867, and book publication, 1868); Anne Thackeray Ritchie, ‘Sola’ (Cornhill Magazine, 1869); and W. M. Thackeray, Henry Esmond (1868) and Ballads (1879).

Cartoons

After publishing a number of cartoons and initial letters in the magazine, Du Maurier became a regular member of the Punch staff after the death of John Leech in 1864. He held the post of social cartoonist from then until his death thirty-two years later. In all he contributed over three thousand cartoons at the rate of two a week with around ten more each year for the Punch Almanack. Many of Du Maurier's cartoons were aimed at the vagaries of fashion and at the idiocies of social behaviour. His admiration for the satirical writing of Thackeray had a large effect upon his work as a cartoonist, and, as someone who had lived abroad for many years, Du Maurier had, at least initially, the eye of an outsider.

Du Maurier's regular cartoon characters, such as the nouveau riche Sir Gorgius Midas, the snobbish Lady Clara Robinson, née Vere de Vere, and the hostesses Mrs Ponsonby de Tomkyns and Mrs Lyon Hunter, move in high society, which he presented as self-seeking and pretentious. Like his father, George Du Maurier was a talented amateur singer, and, in the Music at Home series, he directed his satire at manipulative hostesses who tried to capture the best performers at no expense to themselves, or at inattentive audiences who talked through the music. The Music at Home drawings clearly reflected some personal experiences.

Another large group of cartoons was concerned with middle-class domestic life, giving a humorous view of relations between husbands and wives, parents and children, and employers and servants, or making jokes at the expense of fathers and mothers trying to find husbands for their daughters. Du Maurier's own family and friends supplied him with many situations and phrases and his children and huge St Bernard, Chang, were regular characters in these cartoons.

Du Maurier was not a religious man, and those of his cartoons that deal with the theories of Charles Darwin are light-hearted rather than disturbing. For him evolutionary theory was not a source of anxiety but of stimulation. In his later years, however, Du Maurier found some changes in behaviour and practice distasteful. He took up the subject of the ‘new woman’ in a series of patronizing attacks on women who turned to writing or who entered the professions.

Unlike the political cartoonists, whose subjects were decided at the weekly staff dinner, Du Maurier had to think of his jokes himself, and he was often grateful to friends, and Canon Alfred Ainger in particular, for suggesting ideas to him. For his cartoons, both for Punch and, in the 1880s and 1890s, for Harper's Magazine, Du Maurier relied heavily upon the caption. In some cases, the caption is the joke, as in the long series entitled Things One Would Rather Have Left Unsaid, where the humour lies in the embarrassing faux pas. Not many of Du Maurier's Punch drawings are intrinsically funny although, in conjunction with the caption, the comedy of the drawing frequently becomes apparent. The most famous of Du Maurier's cartoons, True Humility of 9 November 1895 (better known as The Curate's Egg) wittily contrasts an obsequious 1890s curate with a hawkish old-style bishop. The sharply turned caption reads:

Right Reverend Host. ‘I'm afraid you've got a bad egg, Mr. Jones!’ The Curate. ‘Oh no, my Lord, I assure you! Parts of it are excellent!’

The typical Du Maurier cartoon is a small picture, very detailed and carefully structured. A small man himself, Du Maurier particularly liked tall statuesque men and, more particularly, women. Many of his cartoon characters have a classical dignity which suggests the painter he might have become. Those cartoons that have no captions are usually lyrical or nostalgic, often scenes involving his family on holiday in Whitby, a seaport that he loved. These were fine drawings and not in any real sense Punch cartoons.

The development of aestheticism in the later 1870s and 1880s gave Du Maurier a perfect subject for some of his sharpest and most successful cartoons. He greatly disliked the affectations of the aesthetes, often showing them in juxtaposition to true blue British characters. His target was what he regarded as their effeminacy and absurdity. There was a regular aesthetic clientele, Mrs Cimabue Brown, the hostess, and her acolytes, Maudle the painter and Postlethwaite the poet. A few of the aesthetic cartoons are clearly aimed at the musical titles that James Whistler, Du Maurier's former friend, gave to his pictures.

Du Maurier was the father of five children, born between 1864 and 1873. The fifth, Gerald Du Maurier, was to become famous as an actor–manager. Du Maurier began his married life at 91 Great Russell Street in London, moving to 12 Earls Terrace in Kensington in 1868. From 1869 the family were living in Hampstead, with which Du Maurier is particularly associated. Having rented a number of houses there, the Du Mauriers settled at 27 Church Row in 1870, before moving to New Grove House in 1874. For George Du Maurier, Hampstead was a second Passy, and Hampstead Heath, seen in many of his cartoons, was a new Bois de Boulogne. More remote from London then than now, Hampstead also set Du Maurier outside the social world with which so many of his cartoons were concerned, reinforcing his role as an outsider.

Du Maurier retained an air of youthfulness well into middle age, partly as a result of his short stature and boyish face. His own features sometimes appear in his Punch cartoons, and he painted at least three self-portraits, two when he was in his twenties and one, now in the National Portrait Gallery, London, around 1879–80. There is an oil portrait of 1882 by his friend John Millais in the MacDonald collection of artists' portraits, now in the Aberdeen Art Gallery.

Writings

Du Maurier's remaining eye occasionally troubled him, but he was able to continue working, and even, in the 1880s, painted a number of watercolours for exhibition, including the portrait of Canon Ainger of 1881 in the National Portrait Gallery, London. However, by the late 1880s Du Maurier's sight began to show signs of failing. This helped to trigger his decision to seek alternative means of earning a living. He published two articles on illustration from the artist's point of view in the Magazine of Art for 1890, and prepared a lecture, ‘Social pictorial satire’, which he gave on several occasions. It was eventually published as a book in 1898, after his death. A number of his original drawings were sold at three exhibitions held at the Fine Art Society in 1884, 1887, and 1895. The catalogue introduction for the 1884 show was by Henry James.

Most important of all, Du Maurier turned to fiction. He had intermittently published poems and satirical stories in Punch, including his Pre-Raphaelite parody A Legend of Camelot of 1866 and an aesthetic skit, ‘Rise and Fall of the Jack Sprats’ of 1878. In March 1889 Du Maurier offered his close friend Henry James the plot of a novel which he had conceived, and which eventually became Trilby. In response James suggested that Du Maurier should write the book himself. Du Maurier returned home and completed the opening chapters of a different novel, Peter Ibbetson. This, probably the best of his books, sets an account of his own Passy childhood into a supernatural story. A couple meet in dreams after they are separated in life. Like all of Du Maurier's novels it is illustrated by the author himself. The comparative success of Peter Ibbetson encouraged Du Maurier to write a second novel, Trilby. Parisian student days gave him a background for the first part of the novel, which concludes, like Peter Ibbetson, with supernatural events. Here the musician Svengali mesmerizes a tone-deaf Irish model, Trilby O'Ferrall, who becomes a world-famous singer.

The popularity of Trilby, which gave two expressions (the trilby hat and Svengali) to the English language, overwhelmed and exhausted Du Maurier, particularly after the book was adapted into a play and produced by Herbert Beerbohm Tree at the Haymarket Theatre, with Gerald Du Maurier playing the minor role of Dodor. The novel nearly plunged George Du Maurier into a libel suit. The initial serialization in Harper's Magazine included a character, Joe Sibley, who was clearly drawn from James Whistler. Whistler threatened to sue, and the passages and most of the illustrations in which he appeared were removed before publication in book form. Du Maurier wrote a third novel, The Martian, again using the formula of mingled autobiography and science fiction, but the book, which began serialization only in the month of his death, was weaker than its two predecessors.

Du Maurier moved from Hampstead to 17 Oxford Square, Paddington, in 1895. His health was failing and it was hoped that life would be easier in London. The move was not a success, however, and he died at home of heart disease on 8 October 1896. The following day he was cremated at Woking, an unusual choice which aroused comment. On 13 October the ashes were interred in the graveyard of Hampstead parish church.

Leonée Ormond

Sources L. Ormond, George Du Maurier (1969) · The young George Du Maurier: a selection of his letters, 1860–67, ed. D. Du Maurier (1951) · E. V. Lucas, ‘George Du Maurier at thirty-three’, Cornhill Magazine, [3rd] ser., 150 (1934), 385–410 · F. Moscheles, In Bohemia with Du Maurier (1896) · CGPLA Eng. & Wales (1896) · T. M. Wood, George du Maurier: the satirist of the Victorians (1913) · C. C. H. Millar, George du Maurier and others (1937) · D. P. Whiteley, George du Maurier: his life and work (1948) · T. Armstrong, ‘Reminiscences of George Du Maurier’, Thomas Armstrong C.B.: a memoir, ed. L. M. Lamont (1912), 111–67 · d. cert. · private information (2004)

Archives Hunt. L., letters · Morgan L., corresp., literary MSS, and papers · V&A NAL, letters :: Dorset County Museum, Dorchester, letters to Thomas Hardy · FM Cam., letters to Burne-Jones · JRL, holograph article, possibly with author's corrections and editor's markings, submitted to M. H. Spielmann, The illustrating of books from the serious artist's point of view · Man. City Gall., letters relating to the setting up and running of Manchester Art Museum · NL Scot., letters to Cornhill Magazine · Sheff. Arch., letters to first earl of Wharncliffe · U. Glas., corresp. with J. A. M. Whistler

Likenesses G. Du Maurier, self-portrait, oils, c.1856, priv. coll. [see illus.] · G. Du Maurier, self-portrait, watercolour, c.1856, priv. coll.; repro. in Ormond, George du Maurier, pl. 1 · G. Du Maurier, self-portrait, oils, c.1879, NPG · H. Furniss, pen-and-ink drawings, c.1880–1910, NPG · J. E. Millais, oils, 1882, Aberdeen Art Gallery · W. & D. Downey, photographs, woodburytype, 1891, NPG; repro. in W. Downey and D. Downey, The cabinet portrait gallery, 2 (1891) · E. J. Sullivan, pen-and-ink drawing, 1891, NPG · Elliott & Fry, cabinet photograph, NPG · Spy [L. Ward], caricature, watercolour study, NPG; repro. in VF (23 Jan 1896) · woodcut, BM

Wealth at death £47,555 6s. 7d.: probate, 17 Nov 1896, CGPLA Eng. & Wales

Leonée Ormond, ‘Du Maurier, George Louis Palmella Busson (1834–1896)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Oct 2008 [http://proxy.bostonathenaeum.org:2055/view/article/8194, accessed 9 Nov 2015]