Hugh Thomson

Life

Hugh Thomson grew up in Coleraine on, began to work in the local linen industry with fourteen years and came at the age of sixteen to Belfast, where he worked in a book publisher and where his talent for painting was discovered. He married and moved mid-1880s to London where he worked at the publisher Macmillan & Co, and was responsible for the English Illustrated Magazine. He later worked for the newspaper Spectator and received orders for the furnishing of books, as well as for his friend Henry Austin Dobson. He became famous for illustrations for editions of books by Charles Dickens, and especially for the new editions of the novels Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Sense and Sensibility, Mansfield Park, The Northanger Abbey and Persuasion by Jane Austen by Macmillan, as well as for the short story Scenes of Clerical Life by George Eliot. Thomson also supplied the landscape views and sketches of Stephen Gwynns books about Ireland.

The Ulster Museum in Belfast has some watercolors and drawings Thomson, his home town of Coleraine in 2009 could acquire a large collection of his paintings and books. His drawing style was revived in the end of the twentieth century in advertising for the confectionery brand of Quality Street, the bonds made ​​in his illustrations for JM Barrie's play of the same name.