Pencil, 18  by 27 cm (7 by 10 ½ ins)

Provenance: the estate of Elinor Bellingham Smith (the artist’s executor)

Minton was a frequenter of jazz bars in Soho and a flamboyant figure in the neighbourhood’s night life. This swift sketch, probably made on the spot, may relate to a design Minton created for the left-leaning arts magazine Our Time in the summer of 1949 (see fig.1).