Horace William Petherick
artist and illustrator (1839–1919)
Horace William Petherick (1839-1919) was an artist and illustrator, a violin connoisseur, and a writer. As an artist, four of his works are in public collections in the UK; as an illustrator, he illustrated over 100 books, some of which are still in print, and his work can be found in digital collections at the British Library, the Osborne Collection of Early Children's Books, and the Baldwin Library of Historical Children's Literature; as a violin connoisseur, he owned both a Stradivarius and a del Gesù; and as an author, three of his books are still in print.
Early life and family
Petherick was born on 4 December 1838. Very little is known about his early life. He was the third of eight children to tailor William Richard Petherick and Phoebe Mary Ann, née Cooper who had married in St Pancras on 12 April 1835. Two of Horace's siblings died in early childhood.
Petherick was registered on the 1861 census as an artist. He married Clementina Augusta Bewley Bonny (c.1860-1909) and the couple immediately moved to Addiscombe, Surrey, where they remained for the rest of their lives. The couple had seven children, two of whom died in infancy, leaving five girls, of whom one, Rosa Clementina (1872-1931) became an illustrator like her father.
The Annual Review noted on his death that he was an artist of repute who exhibited at the Royal Academy on several occasions.
The public source identifies “Horace William Petherick” as artist and illustrator (1839–1919). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Horace, William and Petherick.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q21454324. VIAF identifies the subject as 91462290. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1839, 1919, 1838 and 1835.
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This entry incorporates text from “Horace William Petherick” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.