Illustrator
A. Frederics
Little-known artist who drew the first pictures for Three Men in a Boat.
On Picturepops™ cards · 0
Their first cards are on the way.
The life
c. 1848-1929 (identification uncertain)Born England (details uncertain)
A. Frederics drew the illustrations for the first edition of Jerome K. Jerome's comic novel Three Men in a Boat, published by J. W. Arrowsmith of Bristol in 1889. His quick pen sketches of the three friends, their luggage, the river and Montmorency the dog are still reprinted with the book. Almost nothing about him appears in standard reference works. Some recent sources, including Wikisource and an art dealer's research, identify him as Arthur Frederics, born with the surname Hipp around 1848 or 1849, who also drew for the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News and died in 1929. This is plausible but not confirmed by any museum or biographical dictionary we could find. Picturepops cards use his drawings from the 1889 Arrowsmith edition.