THOMAS, William Luson (1830-1900) — London
Wood-engraver, metal engraver, watercolourist; newspaper proprietor. Engraved Picture map of the Baltic Sea 1856, for the Illustrated London News. The BM has a large collection of his work.
Born 4 Dec 1830 and baptised at St. James, Bath, 21 Aug 1831, the son of William Thomas (1787-1834), a woollen-draper, ship and insurance broker, and his wife Alicia Hayes (1795-1834), who had married in 1819, and brother to the prominent wood-engraver and illustrator George Housman Thomas (1824-1868), with whom he collaborated. He was educated at a private school in Fulham. He and his brother worked and studied together in Paris, briefly in New York (where he arrived on the Westminster 25 Mar 1845), in Paris once more, and in Rome, before William set up on his own in London in about 1852, having worked for a time for the well-known William James Linton (1812-1898). He shared premises with the prolific Horace Harral (1817-1905). On 12 Jul 1855 he married Annie Carmichael (1833-1916), daughter of the marine artist John Wilson Carmichael (1799-1868), with whom he had numerous children, at St. Marylebone. He became a frequent contributor to the Illustrated London News, often engraving his brother’s drawings, as well as producing numerous book illustrations and work for other journals. By 1868, the engraving business was earning £800 a year and, angered by the refusal of the Illustrated London News to allow the use of its blocks in a memorial volume of his brother’s work, he founded The Graphic in Dec 1869, as a new vehicle for employing the most talented artists and engravers. He exhibited widely at the London shows, e.g. the Royal Society of British Artists, 1860-1889. Several 1879 copyright agreements related to artwork are in NA. In 1890, he established The Daily Graphic, the first illustrated London daily. Thomas was also a gifted landscape painter in watercolour, elected ANWS in 1864 and NWS in 1875, exhibiting regularly at Suffolk Street and elsewhere. He was a member of the council of the Society of Arts in 1898. He died 16 Oct 1900 at Weir Cottage, Chertsey, and was cremated at Woking 19 Oct. “A true gentleman — one, indeed, of Nature’s noblemen” (The Sketch, 24 Oct 1900). “By the death of Mr. William Luson Thomas illustrated journalism loses one of its most imposing figures, and a man who has probably done more than anyone else to perfect the illustrated paper of to-day” (Echo, 18 Oct 1900). “Mr. Thomas was not, however, entirely wrapped up in his business. He was always keenly alive to the welfare of those who worked for him, and took a personal interest in their future. The provident fund for his employees, to which he largely contributed, is an instance of this. The Press Band, another of his conceptions, was a great boon conferred on the many connected with the printing department of journalism. Mr. Thomas was a member of the councils of the Society of Arts, the Gordon Memorial Fund, and the Royal Academy of Music, and showed a keen interest in many benevolent institutions” (Morning Post, 18 Oct 1900). His son William Carmichael Thomas (1856-1942), also trained as an engraver, took over the management of the newspapers. Probate on effects of £108,416. 12s was granted 28 Dec 1900 to his widow, a son and a nephew.
17 Essex Street, Strand — 1852-1855
11 Serjeant’s Inn, Fleet Street — 1855-1860
— Hampton, Middlesex (home) — 1856-1859
4 Palgrave Place, Strand — 1860-1871
— Hampton House, Lambeth (home) — 1861
— Clapham (home) — 1863
— Taplow, Buckinghamshire (home) — 1871
190 Strand — 1879
— 7 Gilbart Villas, Brixton Rise (home) — 1872-1881
— 31 Brixton Hill (home) — 1891-1900
BM. BNA. Bryan. Census 1861-1891. Engen (1979). Engen (1985). Graves (1901). Hake. Houfe. Johnson (1975). LHD. NA. ODNB.