AB Frost, America's famous “sportsman's artist”, became well known for his illustrations of the works of many renowned authors, including Lewis Carroll, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, Theodore Roosevelt and William Thackeray.
His elegant and witty golfing caricatures earned him the respectful admiration of sportsmen all over the world when they were published in a well-known contemporary magazine, and he was described by ‘New York World' as “one of the best America had produced”.
The son of a historian and biographer, Frost was left fatherless at the age of nine. Born in 1851, he was one of ten children, of whom only two survived the artist's teenage years.
Always fascinated by art, by the age of 23 Arthur Burdett Frost was marking time as a rather uninspired lithographer. Fortune struck in the form of an offer to illustrate a satirical book. The book, with 400 illustrations, was a sensation and sold over a million copies.
Fame, fortune and a happy personal life blessed Frost from the 1870s, when he met and married fellow artist Emily Phillips. However, tragedy struck in 1917 when his son, who had led a dissipated life and had stood trial for espionage in France, died after a brief but violent illness. Frost never fully recovered from his shock and grief.
In 1920 he moved from New Jersey to California for the sake of his second son's health, and remained there until his own peaceful demise on 22nd January 1928.
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