Henry Mayo Bateman was born in Australia in 1887 the son of an English shipper. The family returned to England in 1889. He left school at 16 to study drawing at the Westminster School of Art and Goldsmiths College. In his late teens he produced hsi first humourous drawings and caricatures for "Tatler", "Sketch", Punch" and "Radio Times". He joined the army during the First World War and was invalided out in 1915 with rheumatic fever. Bateman was one of the higest paid cartoonists of his day and produced a considerable amount of work advertising Guiness, among others. His most famous drawing "The Man Who..." series of social gaffes and faux pas first appeared in "Tatler" in 1912. Working in pencil, pen, ink and water-colour, he was a master of the cartoon story without words. He gave up cartooning in 1939 to concentrate on painting and died in 1970. "The Prion Cartoon Classics" are an on-going series show-casing the finest and funniest comic cartoonists of the 20th century from Britain, Europe and the United States.
