Warwick Reynolds Prosperity

Signed l.r.: WARWICK/REYNOLDS, black conté crayon with a black line border

Image 39 x 27.2 cm.; 15 3/8 x 10 5/8 inches, whole sheet 40.8 x 28.9 cm.; 16 1/8 x 11 3/8 inches

Framed size 71 x 61.5 cm.; 28 x 24 ¼ inches

Provenance
The Fine Art Society, London;

Andrew Mackintosh-Patrick until 2023

Engraved
‘The Art of the Illustrator and his Work Warwick Reynolds’, published by Percy Bradshaw, The Press Art School, Forest Hill, London, 1918

A copy of this publication accompanies the drawing

This striking drawing of a black family dates from 1918 and their smart appearance gives the work its title. The baby is elaborately swaddled and wears a complicated bonnet with a large bow. Its mother is stylishly dressed in a checked dress, wears lace at her throat, sports a fashionable dark hat with a feather and has expensive looking earrings and a broach at her neck. She holds an open parasol. The man who is the central figure in the composition swings on his chair and wears a smart striped suit, a patterned waistcoat with a watchchain and a fashionable Newsboy flat hat with a button, often worn for golfing, a cigarette holder balanced between his lips.

‘His drawings have always seemed to me to combine an intense sensitiveness for the subject he is illustrating, with intuitive appreciation of type and nationality, an ever-present decorative quality, and virile decision of draughtsmanship; and he portrays struggle, action and character with peculiar relish. …The outstanding qualities of his more careful work are the texture and tone he achieves with his Conté’, Percy Bradshaw, op. cit. p, 6.

In 1918 Percy Bradshaw contacted Warwick Reynolds and nineteen other leading illustrators of the day and commissioned a special illustration from each of them. Each artist was given a free hand over the choice of subject, the only stipulation being that the painting or drawing should be representative of his or her technique and that each stage in its composition should be shown. Bradshaw then reproduced in six plates each step in the artistic process and published the 6 lithographs in a portfolio with an introduction and description of the process within a card folder. The accompanying text explores Reynolds’ background, explains his significance, analyses his technique and contains a six-stage description of the development of this work, from inception to completion. The publication of these portfolios was designed to illuminate the secrets and techniques of some of the worlds' greatest illustrators.

The first stage illustrated in Reynolds’ portfolio is of the blocking in of the entire composition and the drawing of the head of shoulders of the seated man. In stage 2 he finishes the man. In stage 3 he completes the waistcoat, adds further work to the chair and sunshade and starts on the figure of the woman. The 4th stage shows many additions, to the man’s boots, the woman’s outline and Bradshaw comments on the tonal variation which he describes as a special characteristic of the artist’s illustrations. The 5th and 6th stages see the completion of the drawing with a further varying of the textures and the addition of the final details of the composition. Other artists included in this series were Lawson Wood, F.H. Townsend, Fortunino Matania, Harry Rountree, Claude A Shepperson, Bert Thomas, William Heath Robinson, Frank Reynolds, Cyrus Cuneo, William Russell Flint, Charles Brock, Spenser Pryse, Edmund Sullivan, Balliol Salmon, H.M. Bateman, Louise Wright, W Hatherell, Dudley Hardy and Bernard Partridge.

The artist was born in Islington, London. His father, Warwick Reynolds senior was a cartoonist and watercolourist. He was educated at Stroud Green, and studied art at the Grosvenor Studio, St. John's Wood Art School and the Académie Julien in Paris. Reynolds started a career as a magazine illustrator in 1895, which included working on ‘Ally Sloper’s Half Holiday’, The Gem, and other magazines including The Strand, Pearsons’s, The Quiver and The Idler. He was particularly interested in drawing and painting animals and drew the animals at London Zoo in black and white from 1895-1901. He illustrated numerous books on wildlife subjects including Habits and Characters of British Wild Animals (1920), Romance of the Wild (1922) and Dwellers in the Jungle (1925). He also worked in oils, pastels and watercolours and painted portraits and animal subjects.

He married Mary Kincaid, the daughter of a master printer, in 1906, and they lived in Glasgow where Reynolds worked as a staff artist on The Daily Record. He died in Glasgow at the age of 46.

Reynolds exhibited extensively in Glasgow, Liverpool, London and Edinburgh and the year after he died memorial exhibitions were mounted at the Sporting Gallery in London and Wellington Art Galleries, Glasgow. Examples of his work can be found In Kelvingrove Museum and Art Gallery, Glasgow and Aberdeen Art Gallery.