Frederic W. Whyte

“ It is impossible, in considering Du Maurier’s work, to avoid comparing it with that of Leech and Keene, the more so that in his little book on Social Pictorial Satire he himself has set forth or suggested the points both of resemblance and of difference. Like Keene, though Keene’s marvellous technique was his despair, Du Maurier was a much more finished draughtsman than John Leech, but in other respects he had less in common with the younger than with the older humorist. He shows himself, in the best sense, a man of feeling in all his work. ”

“ Just as Leech could rise to the height of the famous cartoon “General Février turned Traitor,” so it was Du Maurier who inspired Tenniel in that impressive drawing on the eve of the Franco-German War, in which the shade of the great Napoleon is seen warning back the infatuated emperor from his ill-omened enterprise. In his tender drawings in Once a Week, also, and in his occasional excursions into the grotesque in Punch, such as his picture of “Old Nickotin stealing away the brains of his devotees,” he has given ample proof of his faculty for moving and impressive art. ”

“ Thus occupied in the practice of his art, spending his leisure in social intercourse with his many friends and at home with his growing family, hearing all the new singers and musicians, seeing all the new plays, he lived the happiest of lives. ”