Antonia Yeoman born Beryl Botterill Thompson sometimes known as Anton (24 July 1907 – 30 June 1970) was an Australian-English cartoonist and illustrator.[1]
Yeoman was born in Esk in Queensland, Australia as Beryl Botterill Thompson. Her father was an English rancher and he oversaw a sheep farm.[2] Her parents took her to visit England where her brother was born and her father died. Her mother Ida May (Cooke), who had been a Brisbane headteacher, decided to settle in the UK in Brighton. Yeoman suffered from tuberculosis of the spine throughout her childhood. She had to use her other[clarification needed] hand after the disease took two of her fingers. Nevertheless, she trained at the Royal Academy and under artist and painter Stephen Spurrier.[3]
Yeoman's first popular cartoons were as part of the partnership with her brother, Harold Underwood Thompson. Together they published under the name of "Anton" in the late 1930s.[4] In time her brother found other interests directing an advertising company but Yeoman continued on alone.[2] Yeoman worked regularly for The Tatler, Men Only, The New Yorker, London's Evening Standard, Private Eye, Lilliput, and Punch.[3][4] She was the only woman in Punch's Toby Club.[4]
In addition to illustrating 17 books, Yeoman also produced two collections of her own works: Anton's Amusement Arcade (1947) and High Life and Low Life (1952).[4]
12Mark Bryant, ‘Yeoman, Antonia (1907–1970)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 accessed 10 April 2017
123Beryl Yeoman, British Cartoon Archive, Retrieved 10 April 2017
1234Streeten, Nicola; Tate, Cath (2018). The inking woman: 250 years of women cartoon and comic artists in Britain. Oxford: Myriad Editions. p.25. ISBN978-0-9955900-8-3. OCLC1007312174.
