Phil
May
was born near Leeds in 1864. Orphaned at
the age of nine, he endured several years of poverty. He moved from
one job to another and ended up begging on the streets. May was a
talented artist and he eventually discovered he could make a living
by drawing stage celebrities and selling the pictures to theatre fans.
This work resulted in the editor of the St.
Stephen's Review
employing him as a cartoonist.
In 1885 he moved to Australia
where he worked for the Sydney
Bulletin.
He returned to London in 1890 and did some
book illustrating until he found employment with the Graphic.
He began contributing cartoons to Punch
in 1893 and two years later became a member of the staff. For twelve
years (1892-1904) produced a Phil
May Annual.
Although
May's cartoons were rarely overtly political, he had a deep sympathy
for the poor. Phil
May had a unique style. He brought a new simplicity of line to popular
cartooning. Not everybody understood his work and one editor asked:
"Couldn't you finish up your drawings a bit more?"
Phil
May was
a heavy drinker. This and his early poverty caused him serious health
problems. He suffered from a wasting disease and when he died in 1903,
aged thirty-nine, he weighed only five stone.
Self-portrait
by Phil May
(1)
David Low, Autobiography (1956)
A pile of old copies of copies of Punch I found in the back
room of a fatherly second-hand bookseller introduced me to the treasure
of Charles Keene, Linley Sambourne, Randolph Caldecott and Dana Gibson.
The more I poured over the intricate technical quality of these artists
the more difficult did drawing appear. How impossible that one could
ever become an artist! But then I came on Phil May, who combined quality
with apparent facility. Once having discovered Phil May I never let
him go.
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