Attributed to William Makepeace Thackeray (British, 1811-1863)

The Bow/Man in Top Hat and Tails
Inscribed "Early pencil/drawing by/Thackeray" l.l., with a faint notation beneath the figure's feet.
Pencil on laid paper, sheet size 6 7/8 x 3 1/4 in. (17.3 x 8.4 cm), framed.
Condition: Toning, scattered small pale spots, partially stabilized tear across u.r. corner, small tear at c.r. edge, affixed to back mat in several places around the perimeter of the reverse.

N.B. Most remembered as the author of Vanity Fair, Thackeray was a noted journalist, satirist, and also an able draughtsman and caricaturist. In an 1848 letter to William Smith Williams, Charlotte Brontë praised his abilities, writing "How can he render with a few black lines and dots, shades of expression so fine, so real; traits of character so minute, so subtle, so difficult to seize and fix - I cannot tell; I can only wonder and admire. Thackeray may not be a painter, but he is a wizard of a draughtsman; touched with his pencil, paper lives." (1)

Here Thackeray portrays what appears to be a man of African heritage in a pretentious pose with an exaggerated bow. Scholars have noted Thackeray's prejudice and racism which also extended to the Irish, foreigners, and Jews, and which has been described as extreme even by Victorian standards.

1. Sue Lonoff de Cuevas, 2011, "Thackeray's Drawings at Houghton Library," Harvard Library Bulletin 21 [4]:13-38. Quote sourced from The Letters of Charlotte Brontë, Margaret Smith ed., 3 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995-2004) 2:41 (Accessed on 2/10 https://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/37363360)

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