Just after his birth, Henry Mayo Bateman was brought to England. He studied at the Westminster School of Art and then at Goldsmiths College. In London, Bateman worked for three years in the studio of Dutch painter Charles van Havenmaet. He sold his first cartoon to Scraps at the age of sixteen. In 1904, he began contributing to the Tatler, and in 1915, to Punch. His cartoons were usually about social embarrassment. Bateman was influenced by Phil May and Tom Browne, but evolved a totally new style in 1911. He drew people as they feel, not as they look, a style he called "going mad on paper".