Leslie Matthew Ward was born in London on 21 November 1851. He was the son of the artists Edward Matthew Ward and Henrietta Ward, and great-grandson of the artist James Ward. After preparatory instruction at Mr Chase’s school at Salt Hill, near Slough, Leslie won a place at Eton, where he demonstrated an uncanny ability to capture a person’s likeness with amazing skill and while still at school, exhibited at the RA in 1867, showing a bust of his brother and a painting. In 1871 he entered the Royal Academy Schools and received commissions for portraits. His father had originally planned a career in architecture for him and he studied that art under Sidney Smirke, but his growing success as an artist determined that his fortunes would lie in another direction entirely. He studied painting under W P Frith. Entirely unrelated to its modern namesake, the magazine Vanity Fair was the weekly finger on the pulse of Victorian and Edwardian upper class society. Founded by the journalist and parliamentarian Thomas Gibson Bowles (1842-1922), it was probing, insightful and incisive. Subtitled ‘A Weekly Show of Political, Social, and Literary Wares’, it offered its readership articles on current events and issues of the day, reviews of the theatre, new books, reports on social events, and the latest scandals, together with serialised fiction, word games, and other trivia. Irreverent, yet always relevant, its analyses, articles, commentaries, exposés and reviews could be and often were acerbic, yet never sour or bitter. The section of the magazine entitled ‘Men of the Day’ was where most of the vitriol was directed. Each issue contained a full-page, colour lithographic portrait, commissioned for the purpose, always amusing, often cruel. Ward moved to London in 1864 and began to move in the Prince of Wales’ social circle, which included Oscar Wilde and the artists James Whistler, and Degas. In 1873 Ward was introduced to Bowles by Millais and that led to his being taken on to replace the cartoonist Carlo Pellegrini (Ape), who was temporarily absent. That magazine’s artists produced caricatures of many of the leading characters of the day, including artists, athletes, royalty, statesmen, scientists, authors, actors, soldiers and scholars. Ward worked under the pseudonym ‘Spy’. In time, he became the magazine’s most famous artist. He worked for Vanity Fair for more than 40 years, producing more than half of the 2,387 caricatures published. Ward spent days stalking his subjects in their favourite haunts and drew them from memory later on. Every portrait carried biographical notes, not unlike those later printed on the back of cigarette cards, but written by Bowles with incisive wit under the nom de plume ‘Jehu Junior’. People queued to buy the magazine the moment it hit the newsstands and the caricatures became a topic of national comment. It wasn’t long before readers began to collect the prints, having them framed and glazed to hang in their homes. They were also popular additions to the collections of gentlemen’s clubs, university common-rooms and stylish restaurants. So famous have the prints become, Vanity Fair caricatures today often are referred to and recognised immediately simply as Spy Cartoons. They epitomise British society during the British Empire’s most glorious years. Other artists on the magazine were Max Beerbohm (Max), who contributed in a style influenced by Pellegrini, the Frenchman James Jacques Tissot, the American Thomas Nast and Walter Sickert, who was also persuaded to contribute from time to time. Ward was a member of The Arts Club, retaining membership from 1876 to 1885. He exhibited from 1868 at the RA, Grosvenor Gallery, Dowdeswell Galleries, Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers, and the Royal Society of Portrait Painters. He was well-known for his portraits and was elected a member of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters in 1891. In 1915 he published Forty Years of Spy and in 1917 he was knighted. Ward married Judith Mary Topham-Watney and died in 1922. His cartoon of the sculptor Sir William Hamo Thornycroft may be seen above.