Gouache, 22.5 by 15 cm

Provenance: the artist's estate; Campbell Wilson Fine Art

Sold with a proof copy of the dust jacket (see below)

Baynes designed the dust jacket for Dorothy Charques's novel The Valley in 1954 for the publisher John Murray for whom he was a regular illustrator. This preliminary study suggests a slightly more abstract idea for the commission than what appears on the final jacket.

Anthony Baynes studied at the Slade School of Art where his 1946 painting The Betrayal (now in the collection of the UCL Art Museum) won the Mary Richgitz Prize. An accomplished designer of both murals, theatrical sets (briefly for Sadler's Wells in the 1940s) and decorated furniture, Baynes was a notable designer of dust jackets from the 1950s to the 1970s, working for publishers including John Murray, Capes and Eyre and Spottiswoode.