Sidney Paget

Sidney Edward Paget (pronunciation: /ˈpædʒit/) (4 October 1860 – 28 January 1908) was a British illustrator of the Victorian era, best known for his illustrations that accompanied Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories in The Strand magazine.

Sidney Paget was the fifth of nine children born to Robert Paget, the vestry clerk of St. James and St. John in Clerkenwell and Martha Paget (née Clarke), a music professor. In 1881 Paget entered the Royal Academy Schools. Here he befriended Alfred Morris Butler, an architecture student who may have become the model for Paget's illustrations of Dr. John Watson. Between 1879 and 1905, Paget contributed eighteen miscellaneous paintings, including nine portraits, to the Royal Academy exhibitions.

Paget's drawings appeared in the Strand Magazine, the Pictorial World, The Sphere, The Graphic, the Illustrated London News, and the Pall Mall Magazine, and his work became well known in both the United Kingdom and United States. He provided illustrations for Arthur Morrison's Martin Hewitt detective stories, and Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes work, doing much to popularise both series.

...
Wikipedia