This portrait is one of a number of drawings Topolski made of leading literary figures in the 1950s and 1960s and is executed in the artist’s customary fluid graphic style. Day-Lewis, depicted here wielding a pencil, was by this stage in his career an extremely well-regarded poet and novelist, having been elected Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford in 1951. Acquired by HM The Queen and HRH The Duke of Edinburgh