80 page original sketch book by the British artist best known as the first illustrator of T S Eliot’s Practical Cats as well as his numerous cartoon-style drawings in books and magazines from the 1930s and 1940s.
In this large format (23x35cm) sketch book, probably dating from the Bentley’s early years as an artist in the 1920s when he was learning his trade first at Heatherleys School of Fine Art and then through freelance work, the artist is working in pencil and charcoal. A handful of the images are titled - early sketches include a full length pencil female nude entitled ‘Lassitude’ and later ‘Bug House Belinda’ above a male nude and ‘Leo’. Female nude studies outnumber male by about two to one, pictured in a variety of postures. As the sketchbook progresses there start to appear around the nudes some of Bentley’s distinctive facial studies in a more cartoonish style, sometimes as if peering at the figure studies.
Provenance: acquired from Waterfields in Oxford who acquired and subsequently dispersed Bentley’s library.
Nicolas Bentley (1907-1978) was a prolific and immensely successful illustrator and writer whose work is described in ODNB thus: ‘His faces are clearly real people he has observed, both rich and poor, old and young, women and children as well as men, and even dogs and cats. Some portraits may be called cruelly accurate, but they are never savage.’
DESCRIPTION: Large format (23x35cm) black textured paper over boards; rebacked to style. ‘Bushey’ Sketch Book label to front pastedown. Cream lightweight paper with perforations 1cm in from the gutter. ‘4th Book’ in pencil to the first leaf which offers a series of heads in profile. A little fingermarking to the paper, but very good.
