An alumnus of the Royal Academy of Arts in London, he was knighted for artistic achievements in 1893, the first such honour ever bestowed on an illustrator or cartoonist.

"[6] In 1840, Tenniel, while practising fencing, received a serious eye wound from his father's foil, which had accidentally lost its protective tip.

[9][10] Tenniel became a student of the Royal Academy of Arts in 1842 by probation; he was admitted because he had made enough copies of classical sculptures to fill the necessary admission portfolio.

While Tenniel's more formal training at the Royal Academy and other institutions was beneficial in nurturing his artistic ambitions, he disagreed with the school's teaching methods, and so he set about educating himself.

In the mid-1840s he joined the Artist's Society or Clipstone Street Life Academy, and it could be said that Tenniel first emerged there as a satirical draughtsman.

[15] While engaged with his first book illustrations, various contests were taking place in London, as a way in which the government could combat the growing Germanic Nazarenes style and promote a truly national English school of art.

Tenniel planned to enter the 1845 House of Lords competition amongst artists to win the opportunity to design the mural decoration of the new Palace of Westminster.

[16] Despite missing the deadline, he submitted a 16-foot (4.9 m) cartoon, An Allegory of Justice, to a competition for designs for the mural decoration of the new Palace of Westminster.

[9] As the influential result of his position as the chief cartoon artist for Punch, Tenniel remained a witness to Britain's sweeping changes.

At Christmas 1850 he was invited by Mark Lemon to fill the position of joint cartoonist (with John Leech) on Punch, having been selected on the strength of recent illustrations to Aesop's Fables.

Gradually he took over altogether the weekly drawing of the political "big cut," which Leech was happy to cede to Tenniel in order to restrict himself to his pictures of life and character.

[9] His task was to follow the wilful choices of his Punch editors, who probably took their cue from The Times and would have felt the suggestions of political tensions from Parliament as well.

The restlessness in the issues of working-class radicalism, labour, war, economy, and other national themes were the targets of Punch, which in turn settled the nature of Tenniel's subjects.

His cartoons of the 1860s popularised a portrait of the Irishman as a sub-human being, wanton in his appetites and resembling an orangutan in facial features and posture.

[18] Many of Tenniel's political cartoons expressed strong hostility to Irish Nationalism, with Fenians and Land leagues depicted as monstrous, ape-like brutes, while "Hibernia" – the personification of Ireland – was depicted as a beautiful, helpless girl threatened by such "monsters" and turning for protection to an "elder sister" in the shape of a powerful, armoured Britannia.

When examined separately from the book illustrations he did over time, Tenniel's work at Punch alone, expressing decades of editorial viewpoints, often controversial and socially sensitive, was created to echo the voices of the British public.

[25] Furthermore, this style is extremely precise, with the artist making a hard clear outline for its figures, dignifying them and the compositions, while giving restraint in expression and paleness of tone.

Tenniel's more precisely-designed illustrations depicted specific moments of time, locale and individual character instead of just generalised scenes.

[28] In addition to a change in specificity of background, Tenniel developed a new interest in human types, expressions, and individualised representation, something that would carry over into his illustrations of Wonderland.

[30] Tenniel's style was characteristically grotesque through his dark, atmospheric compositions of exaggerated fantasy creatures carefully drawn in outline.

[31] Often the mechanism was to use animal heads on recognisable human bodies or vice versa, as Grandville had done in the Parisian satirical journal Charivari.

The top or base of these illustrations runs the full width of the page, but the other end leaves room on one side for text.

Tenniel became not only one of Victorian Britain's most published illustrators, but as a Punch cartoonist one of the "supreme social observers" of British society and an integral component of a powerful journalistic force.

[citation needed] The New-York Tribune journalist George W. Smalley referred to John Tenniel in 1914 as "one of the greatest intellectual forces of his time, (who) understood social laws and political energies.