Vincent Cartwright Vickers (British 1879-1939)Google BirdsA set of six watercolour and pen and inkOne signed with initials (lower right)Various sizes, the largest 49.5 x 32cm (19¼ x 12½ in.) (6)Provenance:The artist's grandsonThese eccentric drawings were executed in the first decade of the 20th century by a talented amateur artist who was better known as a leading economist. He produced these drawings for pleasure and to share with his children and nephews and nieces. Some would later be published with apanying rhymes in The Google Book.The Google Book, a kind of children's monster and rhyme book, was published in 1913. Its Surreal illustrations of various fictitious birds and whimsical verses were all created by its author, the economist Vincent Cartwright Vickers. His extended family-owned Vickers Limited and he wrote The Google Book while serving as a director of the Bank of England. Vickers was born in 1879 and educated at Eton and Magdalen College, Oxford. He was a Deputy Lieutenant of the City of London, a director of Vickers for twenty-two years and a director of the London Assurance from which he resigned in 1939. In 1910 he became Governor of the Bank of England, resigning this appointment in 1919. He later became President of the Economic Reform Club and Institute. He wrote extensively on economics and monetary reform. After a long illness he died in 1939.The Google of the title is a strange pond dwelling monster living in a beautiful garden. At night in prowls the land where the different birds live. The birds themselves have many exotic names such as the Great Skull-Headed Stone Trot, the Swank, the Blue-Billed Ork and the Shivver-Doodle.It is not known whether Vicker's Google had any influence on the naming of the current famous American Internetpany.