William
Luson Thomas was born in 1830. He worked as an engraver in Paris and
as an assistant to William James Linton.
Thomas worked for the London Illustrated
News but in December, 1869, founded the weekly newspaper,
The Graphic.
He recruited a team of gifted artists including Luke
Fildes, Hubert von Herkomer and Frank
Holl. When it was first started, the journal was produced in a
rented house. However, by 1882 the company owned three buildings,
twenty printing machines and employed over 1,000 people. The Christmas
edition, printed in colour and costing a shilling, was particularly
popular, selling over 500,000 copies in Britain and the USA.
In 1889 Thomas and his company, H. R. Baines and Co, began publishing
the first daily illustrated newspaper, the Daily
Graphic. After William Luson Thomas died in 1900, his son,
Carmichael Thomas, ran the company.
The Graphic
Engraving Studio (1882)
(1)
The Graphic, Special Christmas Edition
(December, 1882)
Only ten years ago, if an event suitable for pictorial illustration
occurred on that Saturday, it was considered sharp work to sketch,
draw on wood, engrave, electrotype, and print the subject to be illustrated
for the issue of the following Saturday. By improved machinery it
has become possible to illustrate an event happening on the Tuesday
of the same week, and now we propose, by the aid of the new electro-dynamo
machines, to save many hours in electrotyping, and so be able to give
our latest news pictures up to Wednesday.
(2) On the death of William Luson Thomas, Hubert
von Herkomer wrote an account of the importance of The
Graphic to social realist artists.
It is not too much to say that there was a visible change in the selection
of subjects by painters in England after the advent of The Graphic.
Mr. Thomas opened its pages to every phase of the story of our life;
he led the rising artist into drawing subjects that might never have
otherwise arrested his attention; he only asked that they should be
subjects of universal interest and of artistic value. I owe to Mr.
Thomas everything in my early art career. Whether it was to do a twopenny
lodging-house for women in St. Giles', a scene in Petticoat Lane,
Sunday morning, the flogging of a criminal in Newgate Prison, an entertainment
given to Italian organ grinders, it mattered little. It was a lesson
in life, and a lesson in art. I am only one of many who received these
lessons at the hands of Mr. W. L. Thomas.
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