Warwick Reynolds was born in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, in 1832. His mother was Sophia Tidey, sister of Alfred Tidey and Henry Fryer Tidey, two notable Victorian artists. A cousin, Frederick George Reynolds (1828-1921) was a landscape and still life painter.
After his mother's death in 1840 Reynolds was educated at a boarding school run by his grandfather, John Tidey, in Worthing, Sussex.
He contributed comic heads to Judy in 1871-79, and his work also appeared in Funny Folks (1878) and C. H. Ross's Variety Paper (1877-78). He was a member of the National Watercolour Society from 1864 to 1865, and wrote a novel and several short stories.
His son Warwick Reynolds junior was an illustrator who did some work in comics. Of his other sons, Percy Tidey Reynolds and Ernest Reynolds were artists of some sort. Another son, Sydney Basil Reynolds, was a commercial artist who was best known for his advertising work. Sydney's son Basil Reynolds was a comics artist. His first cousin once removed, Frederick George Reynolds (1880-1932), emigrated to Australia in 1899 where he became a noted landscape and figure painter.
He died in Edmonton, London, on 9 January 1896, aged 63.
References[]
- Simon Houfe, The Dictionary of 19th Century British Book Illustrators, Antique Collectors' Club, 1996, p. 277
- Alan Clark, Dictionary of British Comic Artists, Writers and Editors, The British Library, 1998, pp. 143-144
- Richard Smyth, Breeding Of The Weasel, Clutterbuck, 10 September 2012, plus comments by Joanna Slack