two sketchbooks with drawings by the artistic creator of winnie-the-pooh when he was a teenager. The first notebook contains penciled notes and calculations referring to a Cricket match, and the note "Shepard, EH / Sketching Book" in his hand on the inside cover, along with sketches of soldiers at camp, horses, a camel, women, architectural façades, and studies of locomotion: trains, boats, and canals. The second book is unsigned but contains similar subjects such as figure studies, and country scenes including a churchyard at Wilmington dated 1895.

Shepard would have been between 16 and 18 years old at the time he made these drawings. He began studying drawing around this time and won a scholarship to the Royal Academy in 1897. As early as 1900, he began to sell his work commercially. In 1904 he married a fellow student, Florence Eleanor Chaplin, with whom he had a son, Graham, followed by daughter, Mary, through whom these books descended.

Likely among the earliest of Shepard's sketches to be offered at auction. Though he was still fairly young when these were executed, one can compare the lines, shadows, and composition of his subjects to the later studio painting and published illustration work for which he became famous. Shepard worked for Punch magazine for many years, as well as in the Royal Artillery during WWI, where he sketched combat positions for the Intelligence Department before going on to become a decorated Captain. Both military and satirical subjects treated in those commissions are foreshadowed in the notebooks. A scarce and interesting look into the early development of one of the most beloved illustrators of the 20th Century.
Provenance: The estate of E.V. Knox, Shepard's son-in-law by his daughter, Mary, thence to a private collection.