London Original Print Fair. Note 3

Yesterday I went to see the London Original Print Fair at the back of the Royal Academy in Burlington Gardens. I had no great expectations of finding many sporting works, but the visit proved to be well worthwhile.



Hurrying past the mainly large and garish contemporary work on the ground floor, I climbed the stairs in search of more traditional engravings, and found a few of interest. The set of four Shooting engravings undertaken by the master craftsman William Woollet after paintings by George Stubbs are well known. Condition can be a problem since such prints have often endured more than 200 years hanging in damp and drafty passages - they were engraved between 1769 and 1771. I suspect I saw these prints at auction in Cirencester twelve months ago. Their condition was better than often found for engravings of their age, but not that marvellous. They had now been carefully cleaned and remained in their early frames. The hammer price for the set in the country barely covered the cost of a single plate in Burlington Gardens. That is how it goes, but the London price was fair in the circumstances. Each image has a rather lugubrious verse beneath it telling the story of the early morning start of the gentlemen setting out to the time of refreshment and counting their bag. The last line of the verse on Plate 1st. might gladden the heart of many an 'anti' today. The penultimate line refers to the dogs watching their masters preparing; the last runs: "Viewing each Master charge [load] the Murdering Gun"!



Among the many dealers' stands and hundreds if not thousands of prints, some lithographs by Robert Bevan (1865-1925) were the highlight for me. Some might quibble at describing Bevan as a sporting artist but before settling in London and becoming a founder member of the Camden Town Group he was hunting with Joseph Crawhall in Tangiers and later on Exmoor. His angular drawing of less than Thoroughbreds (Stella Walker, the late doyenne of sporting art writing, described his horses as being "of plebeian antecedents") and their attendants, at horse sales and in cab yards, are of remarkably animated animals and people. But it is his brilliant technique with the pencil, his tonal harmony and the freshness of each print that always strikes the eye and makes on want buy one - but then you could equally afford the whole set of four Stubbs' engravings for the same price! By coincidence I found on my return to Wiltshire that a friend had sent me a flyer for the recently published (Unicorn Press) Robert Bevan, from Gaugin to Camden Town, by Frances Stanlake. With 180 illustrations (125 in colour), I think I will have to be content with this book in place of an original print.