Phil May and a summer in France

Phil May is known as the father of modern cartoonists and was successful in Sydney and London as a cartoonist with a spareness of style that was new at the time. Gray knew May and his wife Lillie well and tells many stories about them in his memoirs. May died at the early age of 36 and was remembered in the Chelsea Arts Club with a framed letter from him to Whistler asking him to propose him for membership.

In the late 1890s Tonks and Gray spent a summer staying with friends of Gray at a 12th Century Chateau in the Oise Commune north east of Paris. Tonks arrived first and was given the Henry IV bedroom. Gray quotes Tonks in a letter ‘Come at once, you don’t know what you are missing-it is heaven’.

An undated photograph of the bedroom and the four poster bed Tonks slept in. Supplied by the current owners of the Chateau de Montataire.

Below is a modern day image of the Chateau. It suffered badly in the German Occupation as described in a letter from then owner Alfred Dunbar-Schultze in January 1945