Very little is known about Sidney Stanley. He was born in Clapham, the only child of Walter Stanley, a clerk at the Board of Trade, and his wife Viola Agatha, née Blenman. Official records give his first name as 'Sydney' but he signed his art as 'Sidney Stanley'. Stanley studied art and exhibited with the Royal Academy in 1916 and 1922. He illustrated a number of books in a distinctive stylised manner, including Serbian Fairy Tales, 1917, Tales Grotesque, 1931 and The Willows and Other Queer Tales, 1932.
