As the fourth artist in the collaborative team which illustrated the 1891 serialisation of Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Joseph Syddall was the least important, producing fewer plates for it (five) than any other artist. These plates are also smaller, occupying a total of only two and three-quarter pages.

Syddall seems to have been relatively unknown at this point. There is still no record of him in Algernon Graves's Dictionary of Artists Who Have Exhibited Works in the Principal London Exhibitions From 1760 to 1893 (1895). However, the illustrations for Tess are not the only works by which Sydall may be remembered. Graves does record him in his 1905 volume: he lived at Old Whittington, Chesterfield and exhibited three paintings at the Royal Academy: Miss A. E. Spong (1898), Portrait of a Gentleman (1899), and Miss Eric Byron (1904). As well as his paintings, there were his works on paper. He was praised by the Drawing Master of Bushey, Sir Hubert von Herkomer, the celebrated German-born painter and illustrator, for the excellence of these pencil drawings — and villagers of Dronfield in Derbyshire remember him still for his memorial there to the First World War. — Philip V. Allingham

Five Illustrations for Hardy's Tess of the Durbervilles (1891)

Drawings

Bibliography

Allingham, Philip V. "The Original Illustrations for Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles Drawn by Daniel A. Wehrschmidt, Ernest Borough-Johnson, and Joseph Sydall for the Graphic (1891)." The Thomas Hardy Year Book, No. 24 (1997): 3-50.

Graves, Algernon. The Royal Academy of Arts: A Complete Dictionary of Contributors and Their Work from its Foundation in 1769 to 1904. Vol. 4. London, 1905.

Hardy, Thomas. Tess of the D'Urbervilles in the Graphic (4 July-26 December 1891): 11-761.

Jackson, Arlene M. Illustration and the Novels of Thomas Hardy. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1981.


Created 10 January 2005

Last modified 23 March 2025