John Leech - 1850 Graphite Drawing Original Cartoon Illustration - Polka

Description

Size

Size: 13.2 x 9.8cm (5.2" x 3.9")

Collection Information

John Leech (1817-1864) was a fluent and incisive draughtsman, who had great success as a cartoonist for Punch and as a literary illustrator. Born in London and educated at Charterhouse School, he began to study medicine at St Bartholomew’s Hospital at the age of fifteen, and worked for a while as an apprentice doctor. However, he was forced to abandon this medical career following his father’s bankruptcy. Soon turning to his talent for drawing to develop a career, Leech produced a pamphlet of lithographs– Etchings and Sketchings (1835). In 1836, he gained further, direct experience of the handling of lithography when he visited Paris and fell under the influence of such French artists as Honoré Daumier and Paul Gavarni. Later he would meet the caricaturist Comte Amedée de Noë (known as ‘Cham’) and the painter Edouard Manet.

Leech established himself with contributions to Bentley’s Miscellany in 1840, and in 1841 submitted a drawing to Punch. Two years later, he began to produce cuts regularly for the periodical, sharing work with John Tenniel, and excelling in images of fashionable life. During this period, he also developed close friendships with the novelists Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray. He and Dickens collaborated on a number of books, beginning with A Christmas Carol (1843), and throughout the 1840s they holidayed together and shared the stage in some memorable amateur productions. A former Charterhouse contemporary, Thackeray wrote in his obituary of Leech that ‘he always looked at society from the gentleman’s point of view’. Leech was instrumental in the ‘gentrification’ of Punch.

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