The artist R.J.R.F. is believed to be Lieutenant Reginald John Russell Fulford (1871–1892), based on the Fulford provenance of the collection. Born in India, he was the son of Captain Cecil John Russell Fulford, who was shot and died at Peshawar in 1882. His paternal grandfather was Admiral John Fulford, R.N., born at Great Fulford, Devon. Reginald John Russell Fulford was educated at Wellington College and the Royal Military College, Sandhurst.
In 1891, the year that these sketches were executed, Fulford was a recent graduate of Sandhurst and joined the Middlesex Regiment. These German sketches are light-hearted and recreational, but feature some military figures and national stereotypes, revealing a time of growing tensions between Britain and Germany in the 1890s. The drawings were perhaps created on a final trip abroad before secondment back to the East. Poignantly, the young Fulford would die just one year later, at Quetta, India (modern-day Pakistan).
