Nicholson (William) Boxing, pencil, india ink, watercolour and gouache, 1897

Nicholson (William)

Boxing,

pencil, india ink, watercolour and gouache, on stiff card, original design for the month of November, in Nicholson and Rudyard Kipling's ‘An Almanac of Twelve Sports’, sheet 225 x 220mm, 1897.

***Following his alphabet series, William Nicholson began work on illustrations depicting English sports. Nicholson showed his designs to Kipling and the writer suggested a collaboration.

"...of his twelve drawings, all are crafty, and ten at least are masterly... we get great economy and great expression combined in real fineness of decorative effect" - Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science and Art.

Provenance: The artist’s family, by way of Clare Warrack and Geoffrey Perkins, Oxfordshire (acquired late 1970s).

Inscribed in pencil verso: “Sands Hall, Sedgefield. Sir, Please frame this exactly the same as the other large sketches (black) only with the smaller signed mount that I chose for the last lot you framed (the hunting one excepted). Yours truly G. M. Ord.”