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William T. Maud was born in 1865, died in 1903, and very little else is known about him. He's best-known for his 1890 oil painting 'The Ride of the Valkyrie'.


Mr. W. T. Maud, an artist whose drawings have been familiar to readers of the "Graphic and Daily Graphic," died suddenly at Aden on Tuesday from heart failure. Mr. Maud was representing those journals with the Somaliland expedition, and was in the thick of some recent fighting. For eight years past Mr. Maud had seen much of war. He rode through Armenia from the Mediterranean to the Black Sea during the massacres of 1895, was with the insurgents in Cuba in the following year, and in 1897 was with the Greek army in Thessaly, and afterwards in the Soudan. From Egypt he travelled to India, and watched the North-West Frontier campaign, and then back to Egypt to chronicle events at Omdurman. He went out to South Africa on the outbreak of war, and was shut up in Ladysmith. After a time he volunteered for active service, and General Sir Ian Hamilton gave him a commission as Lieutenant, and made him one of his A.D.C.'s. He was invalided home with enteric, but was soon abroad again, proceeding to Macedonia in search of Miss Stone, the American missionary.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miss_Stone_Affair

Portsmouth Evening News, Wednesday 13th May 1903
"William T. Maud is a virtually unknown nineteenth century British artist and The Ride of the Valkyrie is his only known painting. During the Boer War (1899-1902) Maud worked as a war artist for the news organization The Daily Graphic – a British illustrated news journal. With the massive growth in literacy throughout the British Empire, coupled with the development of the global telegraph network, the illustrated news weekly flourished. Newspapers sent special war artists to the battlefields to create pictorial records of specific battles, as well as to sketch images depicting everyday life for soldiers on the front line. Many artists of this era took this dangerous assignment for the simple reason that it was more lucrative than painting in a commercial studio. The war artists were untrained for the battlefield, but by virtue of their vocation they were placed in the middle of the action, exposing them to the risk of injury, capture and disease. With pencils, brushes and sketchbooks their job was to go wherever the winds of combat blew, to live under fire, to endure the deprivation, hardship and danger of the campaign, and to send to the illustrated newspapers that employed them rough and hasty sketches. William T. Maud died from enteric fever while covering the Second Boer War [sic]; he was only 38 years old."
www.theknohlcollection.com/portfolio/det...ide-of-the-valkyrie/

Some of his drawings -

On the way to the Front: a Funeral at Sea.


From the Wellcome Collection.

The Devonshires clearing the top of Wagon Hill.



The Wounded Soldier's Best Friend: Sending Invalids from Ladysmith to Maritzburg. This was a 'process print' after a drawing by Frank Dodd after W. T. Maud.


From the Wellcome Collection.

Edit: - He seems to have been William Theobald Maud, birth registered at Grantham in the third quarter of 1865; his mother's maiden name was Croudace. A relation of his may have been the Rev. H. L. Maud.

MAUD - VIGNIER . - On the 30th of April, at the British Embassy, Cairo (by the Very Reverend Dean Butcher, D.D.), William Theobald Maud, son of the Rev. J. P. Maud, late of Ancaster, to Jeanne Julienne Vignier, second daughter of Madame and the late Monsieur Julienn Vignier, of Marseilles.
The Grantham Journal, Saturday 14th May 1898

Two paintings are now being exhibited at Messrs. Lyne & Son's, Grantham, executed by Mr. W. T. Maud, of this place, an artist of great merit. They are for sale, the proceeds of which are kindly promised to the Church Restoration fund. The pictures are hunting scenes, and will be found worthy of the attention of connoisseurs.

A capital band of Morris Dancers have been visiting the principal places in the district during the last fortnight, and on Friday had a supper at the "Red Lion," to celebrate the success they have met with. Mr. W. T. Maud kindly "rigged" them out with costumes and various equipments necessary for a regiment of this description, and their performances have been greatly appreciated.
The Grantham Journal, Saturday 28th January 1893