ComicBooks.com Register / Loginit's free!
'Tom' — T. Hayward by Leslie Ward
Public domain · digitally restored by ComicBooks.com
Men of the Day: The Vanity Fair Caricatures

'Tom' — T. Hayward

Leslie Ward · Leslie Ward ('Spy'), Vanity Fair supplement, 11 July 1906. Chromolithograph.

Ward's plate presents Surrey and England batsman Tom Hayward in three-quarter profile: dark club blazer bearing an interlaced monogram, cream flannel trousers, white boots, and a flat cap. He cradles a red cricket ball in one gloved hand and tucks a full-size bat under his arm — equipment as badge of rank. The caption reads simply 'Tom.' with the formal attribution (T. Hayward.) below. There is no ethnic caricature here; the subject is emphatically English professional respectability. The politics are those of class: Hayward was a paid professional rather than a gentleman amateur, yet Ward grants him the same dignified format reserved for Cabinet ministers and admirals, a quietly pointed statement about cricket's meritocratic self-image at the height of Edwardian England.

About this artifact

Creator
Leslie Ward
Date
Leslie Ward ('Spy'), Vanity Fair supplement, 11 July 1906. Chromolithograph.
Rights
Public domain — free to view, share, and reuse.
Restoration
Digitally restored and hosted by ComicBooks.com.

Part of our mission to preserve and restore the public-domain heritage of the medium.