Thomas Derrick (artist)

Thomas Derrick
Thomas Derrick's American Troops at Southampton Embarking for France (1918), in the collection of the Imperial War Museums
Born	1885 Bristol, England
Died	1954
Nationality	English
Education	Royal College of Art
Known for	Illustration, Stained glass

Thomas Derrick (1885–1954) was an English artist, particularly known for his work as an illustrator and cartoonist. He also designed murals and stained glass.

Derrick was born in Bristol in 1885 and was educated at Sidcot School. He trained as an artist at the Royal College of Art, later spending five years there as an instructor on the decorative arts. He married Margaret Clausen, the daughter of the professor of painting, George Clausen.

His oil painting of the Judgement of Paris, painted in 1914 as a design for a mural, was given to the Brooklyn Museum of Art by Adolph Lewisohn in 1923, and exhibited there in 1925.

In 1924 Derrick co-designed three posters for the Underground Electric Railways Company of London, and was the sole artist of a fourth in 1927. From 1931 he was active as a cartoonist, contributing to Punch, among other publications.

He moved in broadly "traditionalist" artistic and intellectual circles, numbering among his friends Hilaire Belloc, G. K. Chesterton, Ananda Coomaraswamy, Ernest William Tristram, and Vincent McNabb, the last-named being the priest who received him into the Roman Catholic Church. His work also appeared in G. K.'s Weekly.

Derrick lived for some years at Cold Ash, Berkshire, and his sons, Michael and Christopher, attended the nearby Douai School. Derrick, who was a friend of the headmaster, Dom Ignatius Rice, designed the bookplates for the monastery library and for the school's Bede Library (opened 1937), contributed sketches to the Douai Magazine, and painted portraits of some of the abbots and headmasters.