Sir Sydney Prior Hall MVO, MA (18 October 1842 – 1922) was a British portrait painter and illustrator and one of the leading reportage artists of the forward-looking Victorian period.
The son of animal portraitist Harry Hall, Sydney Hall was educated at Merchant Taylors’ School. He decided upon a career as an artist while at Oxford University and united the staff of The Graphic, an illustrated newspaper, shortly after its commencement in late 1869. He shortly established his name when a series of colorful drawings made at the front during the Franco-Prussian War.
As declared in the contemporary publication The Art Journal, his drawings of the Parnell Commission were in the course of his finest achievements in the medium of graphic journalism: “he was in court the whole time, busy next a responsive revealing pencil which missed no outlook of affairs.”
He illustrated a number of books including Tom Brown’s School Days (MacMillan, 1885), and Tom Brown at Oxford by Thomas Hughes.
Hall married Hannah Holland, and was the daddy of Egyptologist Henry R. H. Hall.
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