Paget, Sydney

Sidney Edward Paget is the fifth child born to Robert Paget, parish treasurer of the London churches of St. James and St. John, located in the Clerkenwell and Martha Paget (before marriage, Clark), music teacher. Before his marriage, Sidney lived in house number 19 on Lloyd Square in Clarkenwell with his family.

After completing his secondary education, Paget studied at Heatherly Art School, and then at the Royal Academy of Art, where he made friends with Alfred Morris Butler, a student at the Archaeological Department, who agreed to participate as a prototype for the first illustrations of Dr. Watson from a series of stories about Sherlock Holmes and his friend Dr. Watson .

Between 1879 and 1905, Paget created eighteen different paintings, including nine portraits exhibited at the Royal Academy. Sidney Paget also illustrated several different magazines and newspapers and worked on illustrations for a series of detective stories by Arthur Morrison about investigator Martin Hewitt. However, the most famous of his works were illustrations for the detective series about Sherlock Holmes , written by Arthur Conan Doyle .

On June 1, 1893, Sidney Paget married Edith Hounsfield (born 1865 ), the daughter of farmer William Hounsfield. They had two sons and four daughters: Leslie Robert ( 1894 ), Winifred ( 1896 ), Edith Muriel ( 1897 ), Evelyn Mieroa ( 1899 ), Beryl May ( 1902 ) and John L. Paget (date of birth unknown).

Paget died in Margate on January 28, 1908 and is buried in the cemetery of the East Finchley suburb. Over the past few years, he often complained of severe chest pains.

The two brothers Sidney Paget, Henry Marriott Paget ( 1856 - 1936 ) and Walter Stanley Paget ( 1863 - 1935 ) were also successful portrait painters and illustrators .

Sidney Paget's most famous work is the illustrations for a series of books about sleuth Sherlock Holmes written by Arthur Conan Doyle and first published in Strand Magazine .

Prior to Paget, Sherlock Holmes and his friend Dr. Watson were portrayed by other artists, including David Henry Friston and Charles Doyle, father of Arthur Conan Doyle. Critics noted that the first Sherlock Holmes did not look like a lean handsome, nor an intellectual. He was obese and had a small head and arms that contrasted strongly with his massive body. The illustrations of Charles Doyle, the artist and the artist, were rather made in a comic style, and Holmes was portrayed with a beard . The way the first artists portrayed the heroes of the literary series did not coincide with the way Sir Arthur himself saw them.

The true success was obtained by the authorship of Sidney Paget, a friend of Conan Doyle, whose work the writer carefully controlled. On them Holmes was for the first time depicted as a tall, cheeky man in a cape coat and checkered hat with two visors . It was this image that was later assigned to the character.

The actors Vasily Livanov and Vitaly Solomin , who played the roles of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson in famous Soviet television films , were selected by the director Igor Maslennikov , focusing on the drawings of Paget.

• The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson (film)
• Sherlock Holmes

• The first illustrators of Sherlockkiana (Russian) . Detective. Declaration of love. Date of treatment September 10, 2016. Archived April 23, 2012.
• Kholmsomol meeting (Russian) . Moscow Komsomolets (May 22, 2009). Date of treatment September 10, 2016. Archived May 25, 2012.
• Sidney Edward Paget (biography) (English) (link not available) . artintheblood.com (May 22, 2009). Date of treatment May 7, 2010. Archived April 23, 2012.
• Sidney Edward Paget The Diogenes Club (May 22, 2009). Date of treatment September 10, 2016. Archived April 23, 2012.