William Mulready

India ink and gouache watercolor wash. Design for Rudyard Kipling’s Almanac of Twelve Sports (1898). Measures 7-1/2 x 7-3/4 inches.

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

Sir William Nicholson (1872-1949, Knighted 1936), English artist, designer and book illustrator, including such children’s book classics as “The Velveteen Rabbit” (1922) by Margery Williams and his own books “Clever Bill” (1926) and “The Pirate Twins” (1929). With his brother-in-law James Pryde (together known as the Beggarstaff Brothers), they produced striking block posters and woodcut designs, this style carried forward in his famous series of woodblock portfolios: An Alphabet, An Almanac of Twelve Sports, London Types and Twelve Portraits. He concentrated on painting after 1900.