Portrait of Leslie Ward

Leslie Ward

British cartoonist

Lived
1851–1922
Also writes as
Spy, Drawl

Updated September 2026

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About Leslie Ward

Sir Leslie Matthew Ward was a British portrait artist and caricaturist who over four decades painted 1,325 portraits which were regularly published by Vanity Fair, under the pseudonyms "Spy" and "Drawl". The portraits were produced as watercolours and turned into chromolithographs for publication in the magazine. These were then usually reproduced on better paper and sold as prints. Such was his influence in the genre that all Vanity Fair caricatures are sometimes referred to as "Spy cartoons" regardless of who the artist actually was.

Biography from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

Authors like Leslie Ward

Sources: book lists and dates from Wikidata and Open Library, ratings from Open Library readers, free texts from Project Gutenberg. Last updated September 2026.