Lot 364: Alice Bolingroke Woodward (1862-1911) 'Toast for Tea'

'Toast for Tea'
Signed and dated 1887, watercolour,
15.5 x 12.5cm (6 1/8 x 4 15/16in).

Exhibited: Society of British Artists Winter Exhibition 1887-8. The sitter is the artist's sister, Kate.

Alice B Woodward was the daughter of Henry Woodward, the eminent scientist and Keeper of Geology at the Natural History Museum. She, along with her six siblings, was encouraged to draw and by her late teens was sufficiently skilled to illustrate her father's lectures and papers. She subsequently studied at South Kensington and Westminster Schools of Art and the Academie Julian in Paris, taking lessons in illustration from Joseph Pennell and Maurice Greiffenhagen. Her connection to Pennell led to commissions from J M Dent and Macmillan & Co. to illustrate children's books, a career which was to last for over 40 years. In 1907, George Bell & Son commissioned probably Woodward's best known work, 28 coloured plates for The Peter Pan Picture Book, which has been continuously in print ever since.