Leslie Ward

Sir Leslie Matthew Ward ( born November 21, in 1851; † May 15, 1922; pseudonym: Spy ) was a British cartoonist and painter.

Life and work

Ward was born in 1851 as son of the artist Edward Matthew Ward and Henrietta Ward his wife. His great- grandfather on his mother was the painter James Ward.

Against the wishes of his parents, who had provided the son of a career as an architect, Ward began 1873 years under the pseudonym Spy as a painter and illustrator for the popular British magazine Vanity Fair to work. For this he produced over a period of some forty years, more than one thousand cartoons and colorized portraits of public figures, particularly politicians. Wards images enjoyed with the reader of Vanity Fair enormous popularity and eventually brought him the considerable fee of 300 to 400 pounds per submitted drawing. As an essential part of any issue of Vanity Fair Wards gave drawings due to their high - style optical recognition value of the magazine soon its characteristic "face".

Among the famous personalities depicted by Ward Herbert Henry Asquith included, among others, Winston Churchill, Reginald McKenna and George Bernard Shaw. His work was honored in an exhibition at the Royal Society of Portrait Painters.

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