Eliot Hodgkin (1905-1987)

Born in Johannesburg and educated at Winchester and Cambridge, Peter Ward-Jackson (1915-2014) worked for MI6 during the Second World War. He became an Assistant Keeper at the Department of Woodwork at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1948 and was, until his retirement in 1975, Keeper of the Department of Prints and Drawings. His first major book, English Furniture Designs of the Eighteenth Century, was published in 1958 and remains the standard work on the subject. This was followed by notable essays and by the catalogue in two volumes of the museum's then little-studied collection of Italian drawings. He was a man of wide visual and other interests.

We are very grateful to Mark Hodgkin for his assistance in preparing this catalogue entry.