Walter Sneyd, Devils Playing Card Game Caricature – Mid-19th-century graphite drawing
Walter Sneyd, Devils Playing Card Game Caricature – Mid-19th-century graphite drawing
Walter Sneyd, Devils Playing Card Game Caricature – Mid-19th-century graphite drawing
Walter Sneyd, Devils Playing Card Game Caricature – Mid-19th-century graphite drawing
Walter Sneyd, Devils Playing Card Game Caricature – Mid-19th-century graphite drawing

Walter Sneyd Devils Playing Card Game Caricature

€80,95
€80,95
Agotado
View the full Collection: Sneyd, Walter (1809–1888)

An original mid-19th-century graphite drawing – Walter Sneyd, Devils Playing Card Game Caricature.

A wonderful, humorous caricature by Rev Walter Sneyd (1809–1888), who was a bibliophile, antiquarian, minister and amateur caricaturist.

This is one of a small group of drawings by Sneyd that we have for sale that satirise grandiose or base human traits amongst the upper classes of the time.

Walter Sneyd, part of an old Staffordshire parliamentary family of Keele Hall, was the nephew of Rev John Sneyd (1763–1835), who was an amateur artist and close friend of the great 18th-century caricaturist James Gillray (1756–1815). John Sneyd was a significant collector of Gillray and collaborated with him on some of his prints. It appears that Walter Sneyd was subject to this influence.

In graphite on brown tinted card. Please note the small size of this artwork.

+ Read the Artist Research

Walter Sneyd (1809–1888)

Walter Sneyd (1809–1888) was a bibliophile, antiquarian, minister and amateur caricaturist. One of six children of Lieutenant-Colonel Walter Sneyd (1752–1829) of Keele Hall, an ancient family of local consequence in Staffordshire, he was educated at Westminster and Christ Church, Oxford, graduating in 1831. Ordained in 1834, he took up a curacy at Begbroke near Woodstock, where he remained for the next thirty years. He was an ardent bibliophile and over his lifetime he formed an important collection of choice illuminated medieval manuscripts and early printed books.

Whilst at Oxford, Walter Sneyd wrote the humorous satirical work 'Portraits of the Spruggins Family / arranged by Richard Sucklethumkin Spruggins, Esq', published in 1829. The book, which includes numerous caricature drawings by Sneyd, is a parody of contemporary family histories and similar works of 19th-century antiquaries, genealogists and art historians. Its humour is very much in the vein of 18th-century British satire which characterised much literature in Britain in the long 18th-century.

Works by Walter Sneyd can be found in the British Museum, Wellcome Collection and Norfolk Museums, as well as Yale Centre for British Art, New Haven, and Indianapolis Museum of Art.

COA
+ Artwork Details

Dimensions: Height: 8.9cm (3.5") Width: 11cm (4.33")

Presented: Unframed.

Medium: Graphite

Age: Mid-19th-century

Signed: Signed lower right.

Inscribed: No.

Dated: --

Condition: Some minor age toning as shown. Please see photos for detail. There are historical adhesive marks and/or paper remnants to the verso, from previous mounting.

Stock number: KD-324