Brook Green Hammersmith - 1933-34 Four Watercolour Drawings By Henry Shepheard (“Mac”) Including an Artistic Joke! Together With Associated Woodcut Prints In a Japanese Style

A quartet of watercolour drawings, all titled in pencil underneath (two dated 1933, one 1934) showing views of Brook Green, where Shepheard and his family lived at No.19. Three of the four are signed by a two-character Japanese mark “hitsujikai”, which means “shepherd” in English (!). Sizes between 74x106mm to 145x208mm.

In addition there are four Japanese style woodcut prints depicting a swan, crow, dragon and an iris flower. Two of these have the same two character mark as noted above. For the other two, Shepheard has excelled himself by signing with his own red Japanese seal - the two characters on the right side of the seal are the “hitsujikai” (shepherd) mark, whilst the two on the left side are meaningless in Japanese, though can be pronounced “hen-ri” in English! Sizes between 115x150mm to 173x140mm. (Many thanks to Tony Head for the translation). 

Henry Shepheard was an artist and cartoonist, signing his work “Mac” though sadly very little is known about him. He seems to have been most active in the period between around 1900 and into the 1920’s, contributing humorous type cartoons and illustrations to a wide variety of popular magazines of the day including the London Mail, Pick-Me-Up, Golf Illustrated, Baby and Womanhood. A note in the Marriages section of  the B.M.J. website for September 1900 records his marriage to Emma Phillips as well as his membership of the Royal College of Surgeons. It is not known whether he carried on with medicine or whether art was just a pleasurable distraction for him. He and his family appear to have lived happily for the next couple of decades at No. 19 Brook Green in Hammersmith. Though unknown nowadays, his work is certainly with merit and deserves a wider audience.

All on paper and affixed to paper backings.