George Loraine Stampa (born as Giorgio Stampa, known as GL Stampa) was born in Constantinople on 29 November 1875, the son of George Dominic Stampa. Stampa’s father was architect to Sultan Abdul Hamid but had to leave Turkey in 1878 following a political uprising.
Stampa was educated at Appleby Grammar School, Bedford Modern School, Heatherly’s Art School (1892-1893) and, as a contemporary of Heath Robinson and Lewis Baumer, the Royal Academy Schools (1893-1895).
GL Stampa worked ‘in the same tradition as Charles Keene and Philosophy May, sharing their preference for the London streets, and making his name with cartoons and illustrations of urchins and their animal counterparts, mongrel dogs’. Stampa was a major contributor to Punch from 1894, most of the illustrated weeklies and all of Rudyard Kipling’s dog stories. He was a designer of posters for London Transport and ‘illustrator to the Punch theatre column, ‘At the Play’, which he passed to Ronald Searle in 1949’.
Stampa exhibited at the Royal Institute of Painters and the Royal Academy.
