1891 Overend Print of a Football / Soccer Match - The Association Game

William Heysham Overend (October 5, 1851 - March 18, 1898) was a British artist, renowned for his marine art, and book illustrator. Overend showed artistic promise from an early age and was educated at Bruce Castle School. After leaving school, Overend spent three years working in Davis Cooper's studio, where he received a more traditional training in art. Overend began his career as a painter and his first successful submission to the Royal Academy occurred in 1872 and found success after that. He moved into illustration sometime later and started working for the Illustrated London News in 1875. He spent the next decade as an extremely successful illustrator for the Illustrated London News, second only to Richard Caton Woodville. He illustrated for numerous other periodicals, including The Magazine of Art, the Rambler, the English Illustrated Magazine, and others. Overend also worked as an engraver, recording his occupation in the 1891 census as 'steel engraver'. Over the course of his career, Overend developed a reputation as one of the best naval illustrators of the era, with a knowledge of past and present warships equaled by very few people, and yet he never served in the Navy and neither did any members of his family. More by this mapmaker...

Lionel Percy Smythe (September 4, 1839 - July 1918) was a British etcher and artist. Born in London and the illegitimate son of Percy Clinton Sydney Smythe, Smythe was educated in England and France before attending the Heatherley School of Fine Art where he studied art. He painted in both watercolors and oils and created genre and maritime scenes, rural landscapes, and paintings of people and animals, becoming associated with the Idyllists. Smythe began exhibiting his art in 1863 in an exhibition at the Royal Academy. In 1879, Smythe and his wife Alice moved to Normandy (where Smythe had spent a large part of his childhood) and lived there until 1882 when their Napoleonic fortress flooded. They then moved inland. He and Alice had three children. Learn More...