DOYLE, RICHARD (1824-1883), English artist, son of John Doyle, the caricaturist known as "H.B." (1797-1868), was born in London in Sept. 1824, and died there on Dec. 11, 1883. His father's political sketches took the town by storm in the days of Lord Grey and Lord Melbourne. The son, who was extremely precocious, had no art training outside his father's studio, where he was not allowed to draw from the model, the result being that he never attained a higher position that than of an extremely skilful amateur. He was possessed, however, of an extraordinary power of fanciful draughtmanship and a keen sense of the gro tesque. He was on the staff of Punch from 1843 to 185o and the design of the cover is by him. After his resignation from that paper his work was mainly that of book illustration and water colour painting. He illustrated three of the Christmas Books of Charles Dickens and The Newcomes by Thackeray. His Comic English Histories, published after his death, and his Manuscript Journal, now in the British Museum and published in facsimile in 1886, were both executed when he was only 15.
See G. Everitt, English Caricaturists (1886) ; M. H. Spielmann, The History of "Punch" (1895) ; F. G. Kitton, Dickens and his Illustrators (1899).