Description: An excellent pen ink caricature watercolour on artist's paper signed "Kyd" and dating circa 1900 - 1920 - approx 6 X 4 inches (15 X 10 cm).This is an excellent English School watercolour dating from the Victorian / early 20th Century period. The caricature depicts a wonderful study of the character "Coavinses" from the Charles Dickens novel "Bleak House". Neckett - a debt collector - called "Coavinses" by debtor Harold Skimpole because he works for that business firm. Bleak House is a novel by Charles Dickens, published in twenty monthly installments between March 1852 and September 1853. It is held to be one of Dickens's finest novels, containing one of the most vast, complex and engaging arrays of minor characters and sub-plots in his entire canon. The story is told partly by the novel's heroine, Esther Summerson, and partly by an omniscient narrator. Memorable characters include the menacing lawyer Tulkinghorn, the friendly, but depressive John Jarndyce, and the childish and disingenuous Harold Skimpole, as well as the likeable but imprudent Richard Carstone. The illustration forms part of a series of 12 characters in Bleak House by the artist. The work is signed "Kyd" lower left for "Joseph Clayton Clarke".

Date: The watercolour probably dates to around 1900 - 1920.

Artist Biog: Joseph Clayton Clarke (1856 - 1937), who worked under the pseudonym 'Kyd', was a British artist best known for his illustrations of the characters from the novels of Charles Dickens. Clarke had many occupations during his lifetime, including designer of cigarette cards, postcards and as a fore-edge painter principally specializing in characters from the works of Charles Dickens. He worked for Punch for only one day and then as a freelance artist until 1900. Clarke's Dickens illustrations first appeared in 1887 in Fleet Street Magazine, with two published collections appearing shortly after as The Characters of Charles Dickens (1889) and Some Well Known Characters from the Works of Charles Dickens (1892). Early in the twentieth century five sets of postcards based on his Dickens drawings were published, as well as seven sets of non-Dickensian comic cards. From the 1920s Clarke earned his living from watercolor sketches, mainly of Dickens' characters, which he sold to and through the London book trade. Frederic G. Kitton referred to Clarke in his book Dickens and His Illustrators (1890), by which time Clarke's watercolors were already being bought by major Dickens collectors. The auction of the Dickens collection of F W Cosens FSA of Clapham Park, held at Christie's on 17 May 1890, sold a collection of 241 of Clarke's Dickens watercolors, and Tom Wilson, at the time the foremost collector of Dickens, owned 331 of Clarke's drawings. "As a character 'Kyd' emulated those of Dickens and his own illustrations - slightly larger than life. In his style and dress he was mildly flamboyant for the period. He seldom varied his attire from a grey suit, spats, homburg hat, gloves and was never without a carnation or substitute flower in his button hole." In 1910 the British Museum acquired a collection of 598 drawings and paintings of Clarkes's Dickens illustrations, and the Victoria and Albert Museum, Charles Dickens Museum and the University of Texas at Austin each also have significant collections of Clarke's Dickens illustrations. One of his illustrations of Mr Pickwick from The Pickwick Papers was issued as a stamp by the Royal Mail in 2012 to coincide with the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Dickens. Clarke died in Hammersmith in London in 1937. (Thank you Wikipedia)

Framing: None. The watercolour is mounted on board and has a off-white mount.

Date: circa 1920

Condition: The watercolour is in excellent conditionfor its age, nicely mounted and ready to frame.

Dimensions (w x d x h approx):
10 x 0 x 15 cm (4 x 0 x 6 inches)