Caldecott, RANDOLPH

Caldecott, RANDOLPH, artist, was born at Chester on the 22d of March 1846, and was a clerk in a bank, first at Whitchurch (1861–67) and then at Manchester (1867–72). Having developed a great talent for art at an early age, he was encouraged by his success in the London illustrated papers to remove to the metropolis. His health, however, soon gave way, and, after vain attempts to restore it by trips abroad, he died at St Augustine, in Florida, on the 12th of February 1886. Randolph Caldecott was without an equal as the exponent of the humours of animal life and the joys of the country-house and hunting-field. Although his heart was not in journalistic work, he contributed frequently to Punch and the Graphic, and occasionally exhibited at the Royal Academy, the Dudley, and the Grosvenor Galleries. In 1882 he became a member of the Institute of Painters in Water-colours. Randolph Caldecott will chiefly be remembered by the admirable Caldecott's Picture-books, which began in 1878 with John Gilpin and The House that Jack Built. He also illustrated Washington Irving's Old Christmas (1875), and Bracebridge Hall (1877); Mrs Comyns Carr's North Italian Folk (1878); Mr Blackburn's Breton Folk (1880); and Mrs Ewing's Daddy Darwin's Dovcote and Jackanapes (1884). See his Personal Memoir by Mr Blackburn (1886).