Biography and current catalogue for

George Horace Davis RSMA SAA (1881 - 1963) 

Staff artist for the “Graphic” and the “Sphere”, he became Chief Staff Artist for ‘The Illustrated London News’, where he worked for forty years. “The scope and detail of his work being without peer in the rest of the staff.” Born on 8th May 1881 in Kensington, London, Davis was educated at Kensington Park College and then at Ealing School of Art, working subsequently as a freelance artist until the First World War. He served with the Royal Flying Corps (subsequently the RAF), working as an Official war artist and becoming Head of Aerial Diagrams and had a number of his paintings of aerial combat published in ‘The Sphere.’ In 1923 he commenced work with The Illustrated London News, for which he worked for the next forty years. His first drawing related to the use of wireless at sea in small craft and was the first of many similar diagrammatic drawings designed to educate and inform readers of advances in science, warfare, technology or transport. Needless to say his attention to detail meant architectural drawings were another strength of his, drawings of 10 Downing Street and Westminster Abbey, for instance – and also architectural fantasies such as a proposed heliport at Charing Cross Station. He moved to Brighton in the late 1940s. Upon finishing his career at The Illustrated London News, he estimated that he had produced illustrations covering some 2,500 pages of the publication; each one requiring an informed understanding arising from careful research. He continued to work for it until his eighties and at the time of his death, at the age of 82 on 30th November 1963, he left a collection of finished but as-yet-unpublished works. The sale at Christies in London of the archive of The Illustrated London News on 7 October 2014 included many works by Davis – a price of £16,875 being obtained for a series of seven drawings by him. With thanks to Jeremy Briggs for extracts from his article on Davis in the February 2016 issue of Down the Tubes.