Author:
Joseph Simpson (1879-1939), English artist, engraver and cartoonist [George Bernard Shaw; Maxim Gorky; Gabriele D'Annunzio; Thomas Hardy; Algernon Charles Swinburne]
Publication details:
[First published in the weekly magazine 'London Opinion'. Reprinted in the book 'Lions', published in New York and San Francisco by Morgan Shepard Co., [1906].]
Simpson was a native of Carlisle in Cumbria, and came to London in the early years of the twentieth century, where he was encouraged by Frank Brangwyn to take up etching. In 1918 he was made official artist with the new Royal Air Force. The National Portrait Gallery has eight of Simpson's works, but none of the present six, which are all in the style of the artist's portrait ('ink, irregular') of the Earl of Halsbury, present in the Gallery's collection.Each of the six caricatures is printed in black within a 17 x 12 cm border.