full length, holding a drawing stick and a cover design for Punch magazine, an early portrait in the artist's 'large head' style, the subject then clean-shaven, watercolour and pencil, heightened with body white, on pale green-faced thin artboard, 230 x 140mm., signed in pencil, lower right, subject named, lower left, mounted at lower edge onto thin card support with two drawings by other hands mounted on the verso, [c.1870]. Sir Leslie Ward (1851-1922) joined Vanity Fair in 1873, working mostly under the pseudonym of 'Spy', and going on to produce over half of the magazine's total output of genial caricatures. His earlier portraits were more exaggeratedly caricatures, with large heads and diminishing bodies, such as is seen here. In 1878, Vanity Fair issued Spy's more conventional portrait of the famous illustrator and Punch cartoonist, Sir John Tenniel (1819-1914) , as 'Men of the Day no.185', titled "Punch", the subject by then having grown his characteristic long flowing moustache and sideburns.Please note: the portrait of Sir John Tenniel, please note that the artist is not Leslie Ward, but Frederick Sem, most likely for his Pantheon of Celebrities of the Day, of which the Folger Library holds a large collection.