3 . Va n i t y F a i r
S PY
F
Sir Leslie Ward, RP (1851-1922), known as ‘Spy’
or almost 40 years, Sir Leslie Ward de4ned the look of the society paper, Vanity Fair. His well observed, meticulously conceived cartoons permanently altered the art of caricature in England. From the cruel and often grotesque caricatures made popular by the likes of Gillray and Daumier, Leslie Ward made caricature acceptable and, indeed, necessary to the who’s who of Victorian high society. Leslie Ward was born at Harewood Square, London (on the site of what is now Marylebone Station), on 21 November 1851. He was exposed to the artistic life from birth as his father, Edward Matthew Ward, and mother, Henrietta Ada Ward, were both professional artists. His father produced historical paintings and his mother was a fashionable painter of portraits. Indeed, the artistic tradition of Ward’s family stretched back further still. His maternal grandfather, George Raphael Ward, was a mezzotint engraver and miniature painter, his mother’s great-uncle was John Jackson RA, portrait painter in ordinary to William IV, and his great-grandfather, James Ward, was a versatile painter of landscapes, animals and portraits, engraver, lithographer and modeller. His godfather, Charles Robert Leslie, after whom he was named, was also a Royal Academician and father to George Dunlop Leslie, who won the Royal Academy Schools Silver Medal in 1814. Ward was strongly in uenced by the artistic environment in which he found himself as a young child. At the age of four, he holidayed in Calais with his parents, and produced what he considered to be his 4rst caricatures, of a number of French soldiers loitering at the docks. As his parents were popular and highly sociable in artistic circles, the young Ward was introduced to a great number of the Victorian period’s most in uential literary and artistic 4gures. The novelist, Wilkie Collins, was a close friend of his parents, as was his brother, Charles Allston Collins, one of the original members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Other artists who visited his parents’ studios when he was child included Daniel Maclise, Sir Edwin Landseer, John Everett Millais and William Holman Hunt. Ward was also introduced to the Queen and Prince Consort, who made regular visits to the studio. One such visit was during the progress of one of his father’s commissioned pictures, The Visit of Queen Victoria to the Tomb of Napoleon I, which was referred to in The Spectator’s review of the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in 1858 as ‘a stagey, ashy, vulgar a!air, with scarcely a redeeming point’. Leslie Ward enjoyed a happy childhood. While he was still young, the family moved from Harewood Square to Upton Park, Slough, a rural environment that he adored. His artistic surroundings nurtured his desire to become an artist. Despite this, and the fact the he was a regular sitter for his parents, Ward never received a single lesson from either. His father was actually keen
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to dissuade him from becoming an artist and wished to see him educated in a more traditional manner. Initially, he attended Chase’s School, Salt Hill, near Slough. However, he did not stay long as the school was soon broken up due to the ill health of the headmaster. As a result, he was sent to study at Eton at a younger age than was planned. At the request of his father, his aptitude and love for drawing was not encouraged whilst he was at Eton. Nevertheless, he
Photograph portrait of Sir Leslie Ward, 1915