Du Maurier

Du Maurier, GEORGE LOUIS PALMELLA BUS-SON, caricaturist and book-illustrator, an English subject, descended from a French family who fled to England at the time of the Revolution, was born in Paris, 6th March 1834. In 1851 he came to London, and studied chemistry at University College, but returning to Paris he adopted art as a profession, studying under Gleyre, and in Antwerp and Düsseldorf. In England he rapidly acquired reputation as a designer of exceptional dexterity. He illustrated Thackeray's Esmond and Ballads, Foxe's Book of Martyrs, &c.; and much of his work is to be found in Once a Week and the Cornhill Magazine. Joining the staff of Punch, he became the graceful satirist of modern fashionable life. He wrote originally for Harper's Magazine three novels illustrated by dainty drawings—Peter Ibbetson (1891), Trilby (1894, the phenomenally successful story of an artist's model in the Quartier Latin, dramatised in 1895), and The Martian (1897). In 1897 he published also A Legend of Camelot: Pictures and Poems. He suffered from failing sight, lectured for a while, and died 8th October 1896. See Moscheles' In Bohemia with Du Maurier (1896).