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The Illustrations
Thomas Onwhyn
steel engraving
19.5 cm by 10.8 cm (7 ¾ by 4 ¼ inches), vignetted
November 1837
Charles Dickens's The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, frontispiece, page v.
[Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
Thomas Onwhyn seems to have thought that some sort of overture to the visual symphony of Seymour (No. i and ii), Buss (No. iii), and Phiz was necessary to introduce his "extra-illustrations." What is surprising is that the three sets of figures — the Pickwickians themselves in the lower right; those whom they encounter on their adventures in the lower left, presided over by the vivacious Cockney servant Sam Weller and his romantic interest, Mary; and Pickwick himself, onstage, upper centre — are not in Onwhyn's style. Rather, he has copied precisely the genial, less severe style of Phiz, the lead illustrator for the November 1837 volume. Clearly Onwhyn has had the advantage of seeing the Phiz Frontispiece, issued by Chapman and Hall for the final, "double" number of the serial novel, since he has borrowed the curtain, goblins, and comedia dell’arte acrobats. An interesting touch is the position, centre bottom, of Wardle's page, Joe, the Fat Boy, whom Onwhyn has not integrated into either group, but has left a social isolate, nodding off above the date.
However, whereas Phiz has presented Pickwick and Sam as co-editors of the posthumous papers of the club, Onwhyn presents Pickwick solo as a comic actor, delivering a soliloquy. Both Phiz's Frontispiece and Onwhyn's Illustrations represent both the comic subversives (left) such as Job Trotter in livery, the rascally out-of-work actor Alfred Jingle, and the thoroughly middle-class members of the club, notably Wardle, Winkle, Snodgrass, and Tupman. The lively acrobats are suggestive of the stereotypical figures of comedia dell’arte, and represent the novel’s comic and satirical spirit and tone, and of course the stock comedic situations of the sixteenth-century theatrical form. Contemporary readers would have associated the figures with Punchinello (1832), the Harlinquinade in pantomime, and the Punch-and-Judy Show.
Onwhyn has modelled these miniatures on the following Seymour and Phiz illustrations: Mr. Winkle soothes the refractory steed (Seymour, May 1836); Mr. Pickwick Slides (Phiz, February 1837); and Mr. Pickwick in the Pound (Phiz, October 1836); others are loosely based on figures such as Tony Weller in The Valentine (Phiz, March 1837).
Dickens, Charles. The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. Illustrated by Robert Seymour, Robert Buss, and Phiz. London: Chapman and Hall, November 1837. With 32 additional illustrations by Thomas Onwhyn (London: E. Grattan, April-November 1837).
Titley, Graham D. C. "Thomas Onwhyn: a Life in Illustration (1811-1886)." Pearl. University of Plymouth (2018-07-12).
Created 31 January 2024