Edward Julius Detmold (1883–1957) and his identical twin brother Charles Maurice Detmold, called Maurice, (1883–1908), were born in Putney in 1883. They were the sons of Edward Detmold, an electrical engineer of German descent, and Mary Agnes (née Luck), and younger brothers to Nora. 

Lot 374: Edward Julius Detmold, British 1883-1957- 'Mowgli and Bagheera': original illustration for Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book
Estimate: £15,000 - £20,000

The twins were largely raised by their mother’s uncle, Dr. Edward Barton Shuldham, a collector of porcelain and Japanese woodblock prints. Dr. Shuldham raised Mary Agnes Detmold, and it is likely that she sent her sons to stay with her uncle following a relationship breakdown with her husband, their father.

By 1891, Dr. Shuldham and the twins had moved to Hampstead, and for a brief period, after the age of six, Edward and Maurice attended drawing classes at the Hampstead Conservatoire in Eton Avenue. This was their only formal artistic training. Otherwise, they studied under their great-uncle, who took the boys to sketch at the Zoological Gardens and the Natural History Museum.

In 1897, at the age of thirteen, the Detmolds were the youngest people to exhibit watercolours at the Royal Academy. The same year, they also exhibited at the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours, where the doorman, seeing two children, refused them entry. He asked; “Whose pictures do you want to see – your father’s?” To which they replied, “No, our own.” The twin’s early work showed the influences of Japanese woodblock printing and the natural studies of Albrecht Dürer. Animals were their primary subjects. In 1898, they released a portfolio of colour etchings of animals and plants. The success from this led to the publication of their first illustrated book, Pictures from Birdland (1899), which was commissioned by the publisher J. M. Dent, after seeing their drawings. The book paired their illustrations to verses written by their great-uncle Dr. Shuldham.

Lot 373: Charles Maurice Detmold, British 1883-1908- 'The Cold Lairs': original illustration for Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book
Estimate: £15,000 - £20,000

In 1900, they held a joint show at the Fine Art Society, where one critic described the “clever boy artists” as possessing “very remarkable genius. No reproductive process could quite do justice to their skilful brushwork and the quaint charm of their coloured etchings.” In 1903, at the age of twenty, they created a portfolio of sixteen watercolours for Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book.

In April 1908 Maurice committed suicide by inhaling chloroform. He was found by his brother; in the bedroom they shared. He had left a suicide note which read: “This is not the end of a life. I have expressed through my physical means all that they are capable of expressing, and I am about to lay them aside – Maurice.”

Following his brother’s death, Edward continued to work, and went on to produce illustrations for the The Fables of Aesop (1909), and Tales from the Thousand and One Nights (1924), along with books on insects, birds and mythology. A complete set of colour illustrations for Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales were never used by Hodder and remain unpublished because Edward failed to meet their deadlines.

Edward had largely withdrawn from public life by 1940, and he moved to ‘Bank House’, a large house in Montgomery, North Wales. Failing eyesight and treatment for arterial disease led him into depression and isolation. He died by suicide in July 1957.

A contemporary of the Detmold twins remarked how “they seemed as one soul divided between two bodies”. Their artistic technique was incredibly similar, and their works are almost indistinguishable from each other’s. The British Museum, V&A, The National Portrait Gallery and The Fitzwilliam Museum all hold examples of their work.