William Hamo Thornycroft, 'Bronze Statuary'

Leslie Ward ('Spy') portrays the Royal Academician William Hamo Thornycroft in a sculptor's white studio coat, one arm raised to touch a small bronze maquette of a standing male figure mounted on a plinth — almost certainly a study for one of his public commissions. He holds what appears to be a tool or sketch in his free hand. The likeness gently exaggerates Thornycroft's auburn curls and mustache, the elongated reaching arm a characteristic Spy flourish. The caricature places England's leading New Sculpture man in the workaday posture of a craftsman rather than a grand artist — an affectionate joke about a knight-in-waiting who still got his hands dirty.