Monday 21 December 2009

Autumn 2009. Note 24.

It is four months since Note 23. Perhaps the main reason for this is my idleness, but I also tell myself that very little of interest has occurred in the 'sporting art world' this autumn.

As I mentioned in Note 21, there was an exhibition of the work of the young artist Daniel Crane in June at James Harvey British Art, Langton Street, SW10. Crane has improved immensely during the past two years although he has yet to show a consistent identity in his paintings of hunting and racing. They are fresh, colourful, but still have some way to go to avoid the cachet of being just pretty pictures. I mention this exhibition now since Crane's name crops up again in an autumn show.

Susie Whitcombe, whose work is seen on far too few occasions, held an exhibition of her paintings, watercolours and bronzes at The Gallery in Cork Street (London) for a week in October. Her paintings of racehorses are familiar to many, but here the subjects were enormously varied with some drawn from visits to India. Among the landsacpes was The Attipula Bridge, Ladi Gardens, Delhi. This delightful view of a river bank and stone bridge with trees overhanging the water could just as well have been of the Thames at Marlow or somewhere on the river's middle reaches - a beautiful, tranquil and skilfully painted impression. There were other scenes from India and of that country's cattle. British bulls were in the exhibition as well as some wonderfully free and tactile, rough-dabbed bronzes. A very fine portrait of a skewbald pony was painted at, and titled Devon Art Workshop. This valuable annual workshop is arranged by the Society of Equestrian Artists to encourage painters to enter this field of painting with the volunteer tuition of established artists, among them Tom Coates, Malcolm Coward, Gill Parker, Barry Peckham and Susie Whitcombe. The BSAT provides an attendance scholarship for one student to go to Devon each year.

The Tryon Gallery trading in one place or another in London for the past 50 years, celebrated their Silver Jubilee at their present home in Bury Street, SW1 during two weeks in November. The Tryon has been the premier venue for exhibiting sporting and wildlife art for some time. In this exhibition, sporting art was represented by Susan Crawford, Charles Church, Emma Faul and Philip Blacker, among others. Wildlife art was the domain of some past masters including J.C. Harrison (1898-1985) and Charles Tunnicliffe (1901-1979). This was a lovely exhibition richly illustrating 50 years of high endeavour by both artists and the Gallery.

At the same time, the newly-named Arthur Ackermann Ltd. (with predecessors, in name only, since 1783) held an exhibition of Sporting and Landscape Pictures at James Purdey & Sons, South Audley Street, W1. This firm was called previously Ackermann & Johnson, and before that was the renowned Arthur Ackermann & Sons Ltd. of Bond Street, London. That is until their backers disgracefully pulled the rug from under their feet on the eve of their 1991 Annual Sporting Exhibition. At the time I wrote: "Such attention [to visitors] and readily shared scholarship, so much a part the ethos of Ackermann's, is unlikely to to be found elsewhere or again". Twenty years on, this remains true. The exhibition at Purdey's comprised an appropriately scatter-gun selection of a few (perhaps immovable) stock pictures (but there was nice Thomas Blinks Full Cry), and better contemporary paintings (Daniel Crane) and desirable bronzes.

Richard Green's Winter Exhibition opened on 5 November and included a small selection of Sporting and Dog Paintings. For atmosphere and fun a set of hunting scenes by Henry Alken Snr. take some beating. Familiar as these sets of pictures are with their Taking a Fence, Taking a Ditch, View Halloo and The Kill they set a pace that cannot quite be equalled by the efforts of the admirable G.H. Laporte (1802-1873) of John Dalby of York (1806-1858) whose similar hunting works are in the exhibition. A pair of coaching scenes by Charles Cooper Henderson (1803-1877) also display an unbeatable veracity in their subjects that others (save James Pollard) failed to achieve. Susan Bennett's dissertation on CCH's mother, Georgiana Jane Henderson (nee Keate) was published in 2008. This provides a fascinating insight into the early life of her son and the position of a lady amateur artist in society at the time. Apert from a Portrait of Joe, a favourite setter by Edmund Bristow and a lively terrier's head by John Emms, the dog section is disappointing.

Finally, or almost so, James Harvey opened an exhibition of Young & Old Masters of the Sporting Field at Langton Street on 9 December. Again some familiar paintings (but more of a 'collection' than with Ackermann) to which are added robust bronzes and fine drawings by Hamish Mackie and Flora Beckett respectively. The London Book Launch of Robert Fountain's and Neil Kennedy's biography of the sporting artist Lynwood Palmer (1868-1941) took place at the Harvey opening. I have reviewed the book in the Winter 2009 number of Country Illustrated. In a nutshell, Palmer divided his time between painting, being an outstanding horseman and, a near obsession, a coaching whip. As an artist he was self-taught which, in a self-imposed fashion, kept him apart from his contemporaries - he did not exhibit. However, he was a very successful portrait painter of hunters and racehorses, in part due to his flexibility in pleasing his patrons among whom Lord Derby was most prominent. It would be natural to describe him as a poor-man's Munnings, but in fact, in his prime, he was very well paid for the enormous number of commissions he undertook. He just lacked Munnings's 'sparkle'. Other attempts to write about this enigmatic artist have largely failed, but this lavishly illustrated book, published by Sally Mitchell Collectables Ltd., thoroughly succeeds.

I hope that more interesting subjects will arise in 2010. In the meantime: a Happy Christmas and New Year.