Sir John Tenniel

In my last post I wrote about my recent interest in American cartoonist and illustrator Thomas Nast. Nast was a contemporary of the English illustrator and cartoonist John Tenniel, and you can draw comparison between their works, and other illustrators of the same period. Nast was certainly influenced by Tenniel. 

Sir John Tenniel is probably best known for illustrating the original editions of Lewis Carroll’s “Alice” books, and for a political cartoon called “Dropping the Pilot”. Yet actually there was quite a bit more to the man than this. Sir John was the main political cartoonist for Punch for 50 odd years, and it’s interesting to see just how many of the most well known political cartoons of the Victorian era were produced by him. In the early days of Punch William Thackeray, an early contributor, upset the editor, Mark Lemon, by asking who would read the magazine if it wasn’t for Tenniel’s cartoons. 

A measure of the esteem in which he was held at the time is shown by the fact that he was the first ever illustrator or cartoonist to be knighted, in 1893, towards the end of his life.

The Alice books had quite a deep effect on me from early days. It was one of a set of books which my mother owned which had belonged to my grandfather, and even before I could read it I was drawn to Tenniel’s illustrations, their strangeness, the grotesque exaggeration of the features of the Duchess and the Queen of Hearts, the mad grin of the Cheshire cat, and the nightmarish Jabberwocky. 

I think you can see this same ability to hint at darkness and the grotesque which you can see in some of Tenniel’s depictions of Father Christmas, and it’s a thing that distinguishes his work from Nast’s. In Thomas Nast’s brilliant cartoons, we see Santa Claus essentially as the figure depicted in Clement Clarke Moore’s 1822 poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas” – the one which begins “Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house etc.” Nast’s Santa is not quite the Coca Cola Santa yet; he is a little unkempt, smokes a pipe, and has more of an air of mischievousness about him, but he’s still a happy chap delivering presents and generally doing what Santa should.

Compared with Nast’s Santa, Tenniel’s cartoons often give us Father Christmas, most definitely not Santa Claus. In some of his cartoons Father Christmas is almost like the personification of Winter, and there’s nothing twinkly or mischievous about him. In other Punch cartoons we see him facing pessimistically into a blizzard of whim as war, amongst other things. In the cartoon I copied elements of for the card below, we see him as Old Man Winter, sleeping in a frozen doorway, while the spirit of Charity, accompanied by two urchins, tries to wake him with what appears to be a sprig of mistletoe, to get him to distribute the toys in the box by his side.

Father Christmas being awoken by the spirit of Charity 

Copied from Sir John Tenniel's engraving for Punch

1891 - a noticeably darker Father Christmas than Nast's

The Arrival of Father Christmas - this is a bit

lighter than many of Tenniel's other Father 

Christmas illustrations - his expression is similar

to a Nast Santa's. Even so, this is still very much

in the English tradition of Father Christmas

appearing in the depths of winter, going from

house to house spreading cheer, rather than our

modern idea of Santa dropping through the chimney

leaving presents. 

Pretty, quaint and twee it is not. I find this and other of his Father Christmas images almost compelling as I found his Alice illustrations when I first looked at them fifty years ago.