Randolph Caldecott

Randolph Caldecott
Randolph Caldecott
Born	Randolph Caldecott (1846-03-22)22 March 1846 Chester, England
Died	12 February 1886(1886-02-12) (aged 39) St. Augustine, Florida, U.S.
Nationality	English
Education	Manchester School of Art
Known for	Children's illustration
Notable work	The House That Jack Built The Diverting History of John Gilpin Three Jovial Huntsmen A Frog He Would A-Wooing Go

Randolph Caldecott (/ˈkɔːldəˌkɑːt/; 22 March 1846 – 12 February 1886) was an English artist and illustrator, born in Chester. The Caldecott Medal was named in his honour. He exercised his art chiefly in book illustrations. His abilities as an artist were promptly and generously recognised by the Royal Academy. Caldecott greatly influenced illustration of children's books during the nineteenth century. Two books illustrated by him, priced at a shilling each, were published every Christmas for eight years.

Caldecott also illustrated novels and accounts of foreign travel, made humorous drawings depicting hunting and fashionable life, drew cartoons and he made sketches of the Houses of Parliament inside and out, and exhibited sculptures and paintings in oil and watercolour in the Royal Academy and galleries.

Caldecott was born at 150 Bridge Street (now No 16), Chester, where his father, John Caldecott, was a Chester accountant, twice married with 13 children. Caldecott was his third child by his first wife Mary Dinah (née Brookes). In 1848 the family moved to Challoner House, Crook Street and in 1860 to 23 Richmond Place at Boughton just outside Chester. He spent the last five years of his schooling at The King's School which, in those days, was in the cathedral precinct in the centre of the city. In his early childhood Caldecott drew and modelled, mostly animals, and he continued drawing for the rest of his life.

On leaving school at the age of fifteen, Caldecott went to work at the Whitchurch branch of the Whitchurch & Ellesmere Bank and took lodgings at Wirswall, a village near the town. In his spare time and when he was out visiting clients he was often to be seen walking and riding around the countryside; many of his later illustrations incorporate buildings and scenery of that part of Cheshire and Shropshire. His love of riding led him to take up hunting and his experiences in the hunting field and his love of animals bore fruit over the years in the masses of drawings and sketches of hunting scenes, many of them humorous. In the year that he left school, 1861, he first had a drawing published: it was a sketch of a disastrous fire at the Queens Railway Hotel in Chester and it appeared in the Illustrated London News together with his account of the blaze.