NAM.2001-09-286-1

‘The Swell of the Ocean’. Chromolithograph engraved by Vincent Brooks, Day and Son after ‘Spy’ by Leslie Ward. Published by 'Vanity Fair', 9 Sep 1876. Royal Navy commander, Admiral Frederick Beauchamp Paget Seymour, 1st Baron Alcester (1821-1895). Shows a full length portrait of a grey whiskered, rotund gentleman in civilian dress, standing turned to right. The artist, Leslie Ward (1851-1922), who was knighted in 1919, contributed more than half the caricatures published in ‘Vanity Fair’ between 1873 and 1909. He adopted the pseudonym ‘Spy’, defined as ‘an observer’, and described in an interview in ‘The Strand Magazine’ (Jul-Dec 1894, pp632-34) how, when caricaturing a subject, he tried ‘to catch hold of the leading feature and slightly, very slightly, exaggerate’.