Portrait of Smoking Man, Fine 19th C. John Henry Sylvester British Watercolor Drawing brass cloth measuring tape roll Really sort of iconic

Really sort of iconic

The drawing of the girl at the bottom--with fantastic skirt extending many times wider than her outstretched arms--is what first sold me on this

New York in 1947

As per my postal scale

Portrait of Smoking Man, Fine 19th C. John Henry Sylvester British Watercolor Drawing brass cloth measuring tape roll Really sort of iconicA terrific late 19th c. watercolor portrait, of a manner that makes me think of Manet or John Singer Sargent, etc, with an equivalent sort of confidence and sense of ease about it. It appears to be signed John Henry Sylvester at the bottom and dated what looks to be 1896 (?) which points perhaps to the British artist of the same name, active in the last few decades of the 19th c. and by whom there is one portrait in the National Portrait Gallery in