Phil May

Known as the “grandfather of British illustration,” Phil May was born in Leeds, England, to a lower-income family, and traveled to London to make his way as an artist in the 1880s. After many rejections, he eventually found a position as an illustrator for the St. Stephen’s Review, then a fledgling political publication. May would go on to create illustrations and cartoons for Punch, a leading British humor magazine, becoming its chief “pictorial humorist” in 1896.