Alexander ('Alick') Penrose Forbes Ritchie was born in Dundee, Scotland. He studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Antwerp before settling in London as a commercial artist. He produced many cartoons for Vanity Fair, the Sketch, the Bystander and many other magazines and journals. Ritchie's cartoons and caricatures included portraits of celebrities in a style satirising the Cubist and Futurist schools of art that were predominant at the time. In 1912, he published a book called Y? or Zoo-all-awry, consisting of drawings and rhymes of composite animals, such as the Octopussy Cat and the Porcupython. Ritchie became well known for his theatrical posters, and between the wars he also produced posters for the London Underground.