Mr Punch
Requests the pleasure of your company to view thePAGEANTof his HISTORY from 1841to the present day.onSATURDAY 2nd JANUARY 1909ATTHE LEICESTER GALLERIESLEICESTER SQUARE
Linley Sandbourne Dec\'r 1908.
Original 1909 invitation card sent to \'Hy Gough Esq\' and friend, illustrated by Punch cartoonist Edward Linley Sandbourne (1844~1910).
Measures 12 x 15.5 cm , roughly 4.75 x 6 inches.
A little age-related discolouration and wear.
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Leicester Galleries was an art gallery located in London from 1902 to 1977 that held exhibitions of modern British, French and international artists\' works. Its name was acquired in 1984 by Peter Nahum, who operates \"Peter Nahum at the Leicester Galleries\" in Mayfair.
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Edward Linley Sambourne (1844– 1910) was an English cartoonist and illustrator most famous for being a draughtsman for the satirical magazine Punch for more than forty years and rising to the position of \"First Cartoonist\" in his final decade.
In 1860, aged 16, Linley enrolled in the South Kensington School of Art but only stayed a couple of months. In 1861 Sambourne was apprenticed to John Penn and Sons, marine engineers of Greenwich. Initially he worked under the founder\'s son, John Penn Jr, but was moved to the drawing office when his employer discovered his aptitude for draft drawing. In his spare time Sambourne continued to draw caricatures and study the great graphic artists such as William Hogarth and Albrecht Dürer. One version Sambourne recounts about the events leading to his introduction to Punch\'s editor Mark Lemon is that his friend and fellow employee at Penn\'s, Alfred German Reed, showed one of his sketches to his father, the theatrical impresario Thomas German Reed. At his son\'s urging Thomas passed the drawing on to Mark Lemon. Lemon was sufficiently impressed by the sketch that he encouraged Sambourne to take art lessons and consult the engraver Joseph Swain about drawing on wood. Pleased with the results, Lemon published a drawing by Sambourne in the 27 April 1867 issue of Punch.
Initially employed on a casual basis by Lemon, Sambourne was asked to supply the decorated initial letters that stood at head of articles, stories and poems incorporating the first letter into a fanciful design. Between 1867 and 1874 Sambourne contributed 350 initial letters. Although Sambourne\'s distinctive style emerged only slowly, he became a regular staff member of Punch in 1871. At the beginning he made his name by his \"social\" drawings while continuing to provide his highly elaborated initial letters. He drew his first political cartoon, properly so-called, in 1884, and ten years later began regularly to design the weekly second cartoon. At the end of John Tenniel\'s long occupancy in 1901, he became the magazine\'s chief principal cartoonist.
Unusually for an artist working in black and white, Sambourne used a huge library of photographic images to give accuracy to his work, which was characterized by a vivid and decisive linearity as well as an artistic inventiveness that took his images far beyond the simple concept of a cartoon or \"comic cut\". The quality of his work for Punch was acknowledged by the Royal Academy, which exhibited his drawings over a 20-year period.
While his work for Punch occupied most of his energy, it was not Sambourne\'s only source of income, as he would often accept commissions for individuals, books, magazines and advertisements. These include:
Book illustrations
Military Men I have met ..., Edward Dyne Fenton, 1872
Our Autumn Holiday on French Rivers ..., James Lynam Molly, 1874
Our Holiday in the Scottish Highlands, Arthur à Beckett, 1876
The Royal Umbrella. [A tale.] ..., Alfred Frederick Pollock Harcourt, 1879
The Modern Arabian Nights, Arthur a\' Beckett, 1877
Poems of Edgar Allan Poe, 1881
The Water Babies, Charles Kingsley, 1885
Sherryana, F. W. Cosens, 1886
Friends and Foes from Fairy Land, Edward Knatchbull-Hugessen, 1886
The Green Above The Red: More Blarney Ballads, Charles L. Graves, 1889
The Real Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, F. C. Burnand, 1893
Invitations
Invitation to the Lord Mayor\'s Banquet, 1888
Advertisements
Apenta aperient water
Philip Morris cigarettes, 1889
Rose\'s lime juice
Mazawatte tea
Lancashire Railway
Covers
The Naval and Military Gazette
The Pall Mall Gazette
The Sketch
The Sphere
Illustrations
Black and White, 1891
The British Workman
The Illustrated London News
The Piccadilly Magazine
The Pictorial World
