Tom Browne (illustrator)

From there he was apprenticed to a lithographic printer and eked out a living with freelance cartoons for London comic papers.

The stimulating experience of these regular get-togethers, alongside other founding members including Dudley Hardy and Phil May, was seminal in its influence on British commercial art.

[7] He also created the comic strip Weary Willie and Tired Tim, inspired by Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, which appeared on the front page of Illustrated Chips from 1896 to 1953.

[8] Browne played a major part in the evolution of the British comic style, influencing Bruce Bairnsfather, Dudley Watkins and Leo Baxendale.

[9] His strip 'Airy Alf and Bouncing Billy' first appeared in The Big Budget around 1900, and was later continued by Ralph Hodgson aka "Yorick".

[2] In an article published in 1903, Browne said “I do alleged humorous drawings… I have done some thousands of them, probably, yet normally I am a sober, almost melancholy, individual, and I started out in life with the ambition to paint big devotional pictures.”[10] After surgery for cancer, Browne died at home, Wollaton, Hardy Road, Westcombe Park, then in Kent, on 16 May 1910.