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HILARY KNIGHT (1926) "Captain Boldheart - Gave the Word to Board."
Illustration for Captain Boldheart and the Magic Fishbone, Two Comedies by Charles Dickens with a preface by Mary McCarthy and illustrations by Knight (New York: Macmillan, 1964). Watercolor and ink on paper. 235x160 mm; 9 1/4x6 1/4 inches, image, on slightly larger sheet. Signed "Hilary Knight" in lower left image; matted and framed to 13 1/2x10 1/4 inches, and with Knight's label on frame backing. The artist's copy of the first edition of the published book accompanies the artwork, his signed bookplate on front pastedown.
Provenance: Bonhams, 2018; private collection, New York.
"Captain Boldheart" and "The Magic Fishbone" were originally part of "Holiday Romance" (1868), the only juvenile fiction Charles Dickens published in his lifetime. In the 1960s, Macmillan editor Michael di Capua proposed the story to be included among a series of children's classics he was producing, with new illustrations by prominent artists and commentary by notable writers. It was delayed, however, because it took so long for author Mary McCarthy to submit her foreword. As scholar Michael Hearn has observed, this image, with its cartoon-like violence reflects, Rockwell Kent's 1928 illustrations depicting similar atrocities for Voltaire's Candide that fascinated Mr. Knight when he was a boy.
