CLARK, Joseph Clayton (KYD) (Charles Dickens). The Chancery Prisoner (from The Pickwick Papers). (ORIGINAL WATERCOLOR - c.1890)

AUTHOR: CLARK, Joseph Clayton (KYD) (Charles Dickens) 

TITLE: The Chancery Prisoner (from The Pickwick Papers).

PUBLISHER: England, [c. 1890].

DESCRIPTION: 1 leaf, card stock, original black ink & watercolor sketch, with full background detail, image 18 cm x 12 cm, overall 19 cm x 13 cm, signed "KYD" in the lower left corner and titled in the lower right and upper left.

CONDITION: VERY GOOD 

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: A fine study of the beleaguered chancery prisoner, gray haired and stooping, his trousers held in place with rope, his grey countenance matched by the grey prison wall which forms the backdrop. 
Joseph Clayton Clarke (1857 - 8 August 1937), who worked under the pseudonym "Kyd", was a British artist best known for his illustrations of characters from the novels of Charles Dickens.  From 1927 Clarke earned his living from watercolor sketches, mainly of Dickens' characters, which he sold to and through the London book trade. Frederic G. Kitton referred to Clarke in his book Dickens and His Illustrators (1890), by which time Clarke's watercolors were already being bought by major Dickens collectors.  In 1910 the British Museum acquired a collection of 598 drawings and paintings of Clarke's Dickens illustrations, and the Victoria and Albert Museum, Charles Dickens Museum and the University of Texas at Austin each also have significant collections of Clarke's Dickens illustrations.