Chris Beetles Gallery

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Agnes

Frank Reynolds (1876-1953)

Price

SOLD

Signed

Signed and dated 1911

Medium

Watercolour with bodycolour and ink on board

Dimensions

14 ¼ x 8 ¼ inches

Illustrated

Charles Dickens, The Personal History of David Copperfield, London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1911, Facing Page 448

Exhibited

'The Illustrators. The British Art of Illustration 1894-2020', Chris Beetles Gallery, November 2020-January 2021, No 7

Frank Reynolds as a Book Illustrator
Frank Reynolds is best remembered as a cartoonist for Punch, and for his role as its art editor during the 1920s. However, he was on occasion an outstanding book illustrator, especially of novels by Charles Dickens, in editions published by Hodder: David Copperfield (1911), The Pickwick Papers (1912) and The Old Curiosity Shop (1913). In his illustrations, he applied watercolour with great sensitivity in order to capture the individual personality of each character. The specialist on illustration, A E Johnson, went so far as to state that ‘until we see that wonderful gallery of fanciful personalities which began with Mr Pickwick and his companions portrayed by the pencil of Frank Reynolds, we shall have to wait still for the perfect edition of Dickens.’ (Frank Reynolds, London: A & C Black, 1907, page 56).