Sporting Art Notes and Queries

Autumn 2009. Note 24.

2009-12-21T07:50:00.000-08:00

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.

"A Passion for Movement". Note 23.

2009-08-31T03:55:00.000-07:00

"A Passion for Movement" is the title of a revealing exhibition of paintings, pastels, watercolours and graphics by Lowes Dalbiac Luard at present at the British Sporting Art Trust's Vestey Gallery, Newmarket. It remains open until 1 November 2009. Nearly seventy of Luard's pictures have been brought together for this exhibition curated by the artist's grandson, Lord Lyell. This is a remarkable assembly since the majority of the works have not been seen previously being drawn from private collections.

Luard's forbears, like many distinguished soldiers of their time, had considerable amateur artistic talent. This comes to full fruition during the life and in the work of Lowes Luard. He was born in India in 1872. Educated in England, Lowes veered away from studying mathematics at Balliol at the last moment and subsquently trained at the Slade School of Art from 1893 to 1897. Here his tutors were Fred Brown and Henry Tonks; Augustus John and Ambrose McEvoy were among his companions. Initially, he earned a living painting portraits and as an illustrator. Soon after his marriage, Luard went to Paris for a six-month period of study under Lucien Simon and Emile-Rene Menard. Excepting the interruption of the First World War and some summer visits to England, he and his growing family spent the next 25 years in France.

The expansion of Paris before the First War included building and industrial construction in which horses still played an important part. Luard was fascinated by the working teams of Percheron carthorses that were used in stone and timber hauling often on the banks of the River Seine. The strength, intelligence and muscled movement of these large animals provided the artist with many subjects for numerous drawings, watercolours and oils, including the large (30 x 72 inches) and extraordinarily vigorous painting of Timberhauling on the Seine, 1914 that is in the exhibtion. These horses are again the the subject of a more relaxed scene of Percherons at Water, 1911 (24 x 36 inches) beneath a wooden bridge with their 'carter'.

Aged 42, Luard joind the army as a second lieutenant in the Army Service Corps in August 1914. He was in France from that time until 1918, being awarded the DSO, Croix de Guerre avec Palmes, and he was mentiuoned in despatches on five occasions, repeating the bravery often shown by earlier generations of his family in India and the Crimea. During this time he managed to make a number of studies of horses at war, usually with the guns or hauling munitions in the appalling conditions of wet and mud that prevailed. There are some of these charcoal studies in the exhibition.

Returning to Paris with his family after the war, he continued to paint working horses and in 1921 his classic book Horses and Movement was published by Cassell & Co. His summers were spent in England where his interests broadened into land- and sky-scapes, as well as exploring what was to become a second fascination: the movement of the racehorse.

The family came back to Engalnd in 1934, settling in St John's Wood. At the time St John's Wood was the home of many artists. Luard was surrounded quickly by neighbours and friends with the same outlook and interests, some of whom he had known in Paris. Undoubtedly he gained fresh strength and inspiration by being in this milieu. It was now that he regularly visited Newmarket and, not unnaturally, many of the pictures in this marvellous exhibition are of racehorses training on the gallops or streaming across panoramas in a smooth flow of vibrant, exciting colour. The rugged, patient workhorses of Paris have given way to the excitable and, in some pictures, almost feline-like racehorses. Like other artists of his generation, Luard was also attractd to the circus. The bright lights and colours, the perfoming animals and the clowns furnishing him with subjects to draw and paint. Above all, his drawings of trapeze artists and acrobats are outstanding in their capture of human movement in a few deft strokes of brush or pastel. Lowes Luard died in 1944.

In the admirable catalogue that accompanies the exhibition, mention is made of Luard's relationships with many of his mentors and contemporaries in the artistic world. Two gaps among them occur to me. It is difficult not to presume that Gericault was not an influence in his early study of horses such was their joint exploration of equine vigour; and also that Luard must have been particularly aware of the work of his close contemporary and Francophile, Robert Bevan (1865-1925). The latter's interpretation of the structure of a hores's movement was in many ways similar to that of Luard, mostly in their graphic illustrations. I wonder if anyone would agree?

This is a beautifully presented exhibition of the work of an artist with a much broader perspective of life and art, not least of horses' movement, than is usually found among 'sporting painters'. Lord Lyell must be congratulated on gathering together such a wide-ranging selection of his grandfather's otherwise little known work accompanied, as I have said, by a most informative illustrated catalogue that can be obtained from th BSAT.

The Horner Statue. Note 22.

2009-06-15T14:15:00.000-07:00

The other day I was lent the Memoirs of a Veterinary Surgeon by Reginald Hancock (1952). This slim volume has woodcut illustrations and vignettes by Elaine Hancock. Part of the book is an account of Hancock's work during the Great War of 1914-1919: accounts of the horrors that many horses endured and of the many thousands that perished. The faint-hearted should skip these chapters! However, the book also recalls the author's friendship, if that is the right word, with Lieutenant Edward Horner whose memorial equestrian statue by Alfred Munnings stands in St Andrew's Church, Mells, Somerset. Both Hancock's description of Horner and his thoughts on the figure subsequently portrayed prompted me to re-visit Mells two days ago. I had heared that the statue had very recently been moved from its cramped position in the Horner Chapel to the main part of the church where it now stands and can be admired properly.

Edward Horner was the eldest son of a family that had lived quietly at their Mells estate for many generations. Hancock describes Edward as having "one of the finest brains of any man I have ever known." He was brilliant at Oxford before entering the law chambers of Lord Birkenhead - who earlier had recognised Horner's promise. Since he was tall, fair-haired and handsome, the term 'gilded youth' comes to mind but, like so many of his time, Horner's life was to be cut short. He was severely wounded at the battle of Ypres. Once recovered, he was posted to a Reserve Cavalry Regiment at Tidworth Barracks, Hampshire, awaiting his return to the front. Horner had arrived at the barracks "complete with his own valet, groom and charger." After two years in France, Hancock too was posted to Tidworth. He was conscious of being from a very different mould to the Mells' heir with whom he was to share a room in the Officers Mess. It was unfortunate that as Hancock was unpacking his belongings the approaching Horner was heard protesting that he was now having to share his room with "some bloody awful vet."

While initially somewhat aloof, Horner apologised for his unforgivable outburst. One night, after a heated argument on the merits or otherwise of the composer Wagner (Horner, against; Hancock, for), a friendship was born as the cavalryman realised that there was a great deal more to the "bloody awful vet" than he had first assumed. When leaving Tidworth to join the Eighth (Queen Mary's Own) Hussars, Horner said goodbye to Hancock with the words: "You have been such a delightful companion." Edward Horner died of wounds sustained at Noyelles, Picardy on 21 November 1917, aged 28 years. He was the last male heir of the Horner family. A 16-year-old younger brother had died in 1908, and his sister, who eventually inherited the estate, had suffered the loss of her husband, Raymond Asquith, who was killed in France in 1916 while serving with the Grenadier Guards.

Turning now to the Munnings statue. This was commissioned by Lady Horner, Edward's mother, through the architect Sir Edwin Lutyens. Lutyens had close links with the Horners and Mells where he had designed the grand, outdoor memorial to those from the village who fell in the Great War, (he also designed the bus shelter!). The statue was the first work undertaken by Munnings after he purchased Castle House at Dedham, to where his sectional, mobile studio was moved from Swainsthorpe. I am not sure which usually comes first: a statue or its plinth? In this case Lutyens gave Munnings the dimensions of the plinth base: 5 feet by 3 feet, 6 inches, (it is approximately 5 feet high). In relation to this plinth, Munnings decided the horse carrying Horner should be seen as about the size of a deer. He had photographs from which to work, and he would also have known that Horner was very tall. Munnings was assisted by a sculptor friend named Waters, about whom I can find no further information. After making two small statuettes for Lady Horner's approval, Waters and the village blacksmith built the armature on which the former and Munnings applied the clay. Unusually, the plaster-cast was also made in the studio, and a full account of the work can be found in the second part of Munnings's autobiography, The Second Burst (1951).

For more than 85 years the statue stood in the Horner Chapel in Mells church. The plinth covered much of the accessible chapel floor, itself only 18 feet by 13 feet, including a 2-foot deep table monument running down the long side. This meant that it was virtually impossible to 'stand back' to admire the bronze, let alone take a good photograph if one wished to do so. Hancock remarks in his book that he "would like to see it [the statute and plinth] brought out some day into the body of the church where one can see it in a more spacious setting." Admiring the statue immensely and finding the horse and the youthful Horner's features beautifully portrayed, Hancock makes only one critical comment. This is that Munnings has failed to take account of the "extraordinary length of his (Horner's) limbs" which, even when riding a seventeen hands horse, reached "groundwards far further than those of any horseman I have ever seen."

After some resistance and argument, the statue has very recently been moved into the north side-aisle of the church, surrounded by other war memorials. Hancock, and I am sure Munnings, would be pleased that the figure can now be studied at full length and from all angles. It is signed: A.J. Munnings, Dedham, Essex, 1920. It is a remarkable bronze by an artist who rarely practised sculpture, (although the Horner statue led to a commission from the Jockey Club for Munnings to model the racehorse Brown Jack). Should you be in north Somerset, try to visit Mells.

Exhibition: From Stubbs to Munnings. Note 21.

2009-05-31T14:22:00.000-07:00

Last September, while writing about the Sartorius family (Note 10), I mentioned James Harvey's wide-ranging exhibition of sporting art at his Gallery at 15 Langton Street, London SW10. Now, like the proverbial London buses arriving together after a long interval, there is a similar exhibition opening the day after tomorrow (2 June, continuing until the 26th). This exhibition is mounted by Dickinson, 58 Jermyn Street, SW1: Sporting Art, from Stubbs to Munnings, an Exhibition of 300 years of British Sporting Art, is the full title. It is a selling exhibition, but among the paintings hanging on the walls are a number of very choice examples of the genre on loan from private collections.

Before describing some of the exhibits, particularly those of small size, I have some sympathy with the browser of catalogues who is confused by the size of the picture illustrations compared to the dimensions of the real thing. Of course, one should look at the measurements given, but how often have you seen a comparatively large photograph in a catalogue and then spent time searching the exhibition or sale-room walls only to discover the picture tucked away in a corner to be of 'cabinet' size? It works the other way too! Plainly the designers of catalogues would have fits if they were asked to provide all the catalogue illustrations in proportion to the size of the originals - but how useful it would be to discover at a glance, by size, the picture you were looking for!

This impossible thought came into my head when admiring Dickinson's catalogue (as tall as but slightly wider than A4). The opening page has two photographs of similar size, one above the other. The top is of a really good example of John Wootton horse portraiture. It is of The Prince of Denmark's horse, Leedes, held [being led] by a Groom, (39 x 49 inches). Below is A Lion and Lioness by George Stubbs, a 1778 enamel on Wedgwood earthenware, 17 x 24 inches. The first is on loan. The size of an illustration is often related to the importance of the painting or painter, as here, although another nice Wootton, A Grey Racehorse held by a Groom (40 x 50 inches) is illustrated later in the catalogue where there are four photographs to the page. But that is enough of that!

There are lovely equestrian portraits by John Ferneley and by John Frederick Herring Snr., again the first is on loan. The Ferneley is of Andrew Berkeley Drummond mounted on Butcher at Cadland, and the Herring shows The Hon. Edward Petre's The Colonel with William Scott up. It was painted in the year that The Colonel won the 1828 St Leger. The Colonel's trainer, Bill Scott's brother John Scott and a groom are in attendance. Both paintings demonstrate each artist's ability to paint sympathtically both horses and people but, really above all, they breath the air of those portrayed being masters of all they survey in their respective sporting roles. The landscape backgounds are of a tranquil England - even on Doncaster racecourse. I have difficulty in classifying many of Sir Edwin Landseer's paintings as 'sporting' works. He was an extraordinarily observant painter of animals of every kind from polar bears to greyhounds but, at times, as in this exhibition, he seemed preoccupied with death, perhaps a portent of his later bouts of irrational temper and depression. A Deer just Shot, and its pair Deer fallen from a Precipice, painted around 1828-29 (each 18 x 24 inches), are uncomfortable pictures of this usually magnificent animal in distress - sporting pictures? I think not; but where else do you exhibit them if not among sporting and animal paintings?

Among the exhibitions smaller pictures are a pair of those rarities, fishing paintings by James Pollard. They are of Pike Fishing at Waltham Abbey, Essex and Trout Fishing at Beddington Corner, Surrey. Both are on panel, 7 x 10 inches. Pollard was a keen fisherman himself when not being pursued by his father to engrave, or painting his lively, decorative coaching scenes. These little jems, 6 x 8 inches, have the added interest of being identifiable scenes and, had they not also been on loan, would, as they say, fly off the wall into new ownership. Another small pair of paintings, 6 x 8 inches, are shooting pictures apparently by the little known artist, John Pitman. More usually associated with painting horses or cattle (and a few pictures of dead game), Pitman rarely strayed far from Worcetsershire where he was born in 1789. The paintings are of Pheasant Shooting and Grouse Shooting. In the latter scene the fenced and wooded landscape suggests that the grouse have flown far from their usual habitat, although in years gone by I have attempted to shoot grouse in North Wales. Pitman was a close friend of the miniature painter James Clements who moved from London to Worcester in about 1820. He included Pitman in miniature in his fascinating group portrait of some local gentlemen and businessmen Bowling on the Green at the Saracen's Head, Worcester, 1821. Pitman died at Alveley, Shropshire in 1850. It is valuable to add these two pictures to the short list of his known work. Among other small paintings is a Spaniel flushing out a Pheasant (7 x 9 inches), 1838, by William J. Shayer and, from the previous year, the slightly larger, exuberant Flora, Springer Spaniel [in the act of retrieving] of Mr R.L. Evans, by the more versatile Francis Calcraft Turner.

These are just a few of the interesting pictures in the exhibition which includes French and English bronzes as well as a pair of typically smooth and tactile studies of Thoroughbred Horses by the American, Herbert Heseltine, who spent some years in England at the beginning of the 20th Century. The exhibition provides a reminder of the development of sporting art in this country from the slight stiffness of Wootton's equine portraits to the semi-impressionism of Munnings. There are some familiar friends seen before, but the whole exhibition succeeds in embracing the years between the mid-18th and 20th centuries, as the exhibition title foretells. Members of the British Sporting Art Trust have a Private View on 9 June.

Returning to the beginning of this Note, James Harvey is holding a one-man exhibition of the paintings and drawings of the contemporary Daniel Crane, "Horsey Pictures in Ascot Week", at his SW10 Gallery from 7 June until 2 July.

F.L. Wilder's Catalogue of English Sporting Prints. No.20.

2009-05-27T03:58:00.000-07:00

At this time of year the need to garden conflicts with any wishes I have to write a Sporting Art Note. But I have another task (entirely self-inflicted) which is to 'edit' the F.L. Wilder Archive that has recently been given to the British Sporting Art Trust (BSAT) by the late Mr Wilder's friend and business partner, Hildegard Fritz-Denneville. This task is far more interesting than gardening, so I devote my mornings to it and garden in the afternoon (if it is dry!).

F.L. Wilder, known as 'Tim' to many, died on the 1st of September 1993 in his 101st year. He joined the fine art auctioneers Sotheby, Wilkinson, Hodge, as they were then named, in 1911. Serving briefly in the First World War (in which two older brothers lost their lives), he became disabled by severe rheumatic fever. Returning to Sotheby's he remained with them until retirement in 1976. His prime interest was in prints. He published, with a younger brother, Print Prices Current from 1918 to 1939. He also published How to Identify Prints in 1969, and the now familiar picture book, English Sporting Prints in 1974. His other interests ranged from Rembrandt's etchings to discovering previously unrecognised oil sketches by John Constable.

In the 1920s the print market was at its height with remarkable prices being paid for good impressions, particularly of mezzotints. However, it was in some respects a false market and it collapsed as quickly as it had grown. Frank Siltzer published The Story of British Sporting Prints in 1925, and a limited edition in larger format followed in 1929. The 1929 edition has been, and still is, the main source document for those interested in sporting prints. The book is part anecdotal accounts of the artists and part catalogue of prints after their work. Wonderful as it is, Siltzer depended almost entirely on his own observation of prints that, quite naturally, left some gaps and a few mistakes. Wilder decided (I am not sure when) to replace Siltzer's book with a magnus opus of his own: A Catalogue of English Sporting Prints. Among much other valuable archive material given to the BSAT is Wilder's copy of Siltzer. Every page is covered with minute pencil corrections and additions. Perhaps running out of room for further comment in the pages of Siltzer, Wilder decided to compile his own catalogue?

This was an immense undertaking. The late Mr Fores said that he found it was impossible to catalogue all the work of one artist, Henry Alken Snr., let alone all sporting artists (although there were none more prolific than Alken). Wilder was well placed at Sotheby's, cataloguing and researching (among many other tasks) the sporting and decorative prints that passed through the auction house. I remember visiting him in his small office - hardly bigger than a broom cupboard, and his kindness in answering my questions about the engravers of sporting aquatints in whom I was interested. While he seemed to be extraordinarily busy, there was always time to help others. I was then working in London, and it was Wilder who introduced me to Dudley Snelgrove who was cataloguing the Paul Mellon Collection of Sporting and Animal Prints. Dudley Snelgrove worked in an upstairs room in Dover Street and he invited me to eat my lunchtime sandwiches with him on a number of occasions. At that time, he was working on the Duke of Gloucester's collection of prints (mainly hunting, after Alken) that Mr Mellon had bought from the Duke in 1956. The collection was housed in twelve leather-bound, crested, elephant folios of prints in pristine condition, some with the original watercolours from which they were engraved on facing pages. It was glorious to see the colours of Alken's First Steeple Chase on Record so well interpreted by John Harris in the engravings (aquatints) that had a plum-like bloom in their dark areas.

Wilder's catalogue covers all the usual fieldsports, racing, equestrian portraits, as well as cricket, pugilism, pedestrianism and many other traditional country sports and pastimes. It comprises about 3,000 loose sheets of varying size from foolscap to narrow slip of paper: most are typescript, a few manuscript. These pieces of paper are catalogued alphabetically and chronologically by artist (for Henry Alken there are over 300 sheets), a few containing the details of a single print, others cover a complete series or set. Also included are the names of those artists who had their work illustrated in The Sporting Magazine, New Sporting Magazine, The Sportsman and The Sporting Review. In all, I have listed 1,000 names of artists!

Sadly, Wilder's life-long ambition to replace Siltzer with his own published catalogue of sporting prints is unfulfilled, and without serious outside sponsorship (since the material is not yet in publishable form) this could not be contemplated by the BSAT. Added to this is the fact that current interest in the subject is small, and any financial return on outlay would be minuscule. However, it is an immensely valuable archive that will shortly be housed in the BSAT's reference library at Newmarket, where it can be consulted. Back to the garden!

The British Sporting Art Trust. Note 19.

2009-04-26T09:35:00.000-07:00

From time to time I have mentioned the British Sporting Art Trust (BSAT) in these Notes. This Note provides more information about the Trust. A short cut is to visit the website: www.bsat.co.uk

The Trust was established in 1977 by a group of individuals who felt that the absence of recognition by the Tate Gallery (now Tate Britain) of an important aspect of our lives and art heritage was woeful. This feeling was compounded by the realisation that a large number of our best sporting pictures were being sold and going abroad, particularly to America. This was at a time when such paintings were not thought of by their buyers as alternative investments - they valued them for what they were and and what they depicted. The Tate had a very small holding of sporting pictures that largely remained hidden in their cellars.

The Trust has been a Registered Charity (No. 274156) from the outset. The original trustees each gave £10 towards a fund, wondering about their future liability and the likely bank overdraft they might have to pay off! Often short of money, the Trust has however grown and grown with its own collection of paintings, prints and books now valued at £3M. In essence, the objectives of the Trust remain as in the first charter:

a. To form and display a representative Collection of British Sporting Art.

b. To mount loan exhibition of 20th Century sporting art.

c. To support and publish research on the subject of sporting art.

d. To sponsor young artists and students in their study of sporting art.

Through the Trust, over 50 sporting works of art have been acquired for Tate Britain, including a gift of 30 pictures from the late Mr Paul Mellon KBE and the Mrs F. Ambrose Clark Bequest. Both Mr Mellon and the husband of Mrs Ambrose Clark were enthusiastic American anglophiles who, in this way, returned some magnificent sporting pictures to Britain. Initially these pictures were displayed at the Tate, but the interest of successive Directors soon waned. To achieve the first charter objective it became imperative for the Trust to find its own home. London would have been an ideal location, but this proved far too costly. In 1986 the Trust's Vestey Gallery of Sporting Art was opened at the National Horseracing Museum at Newmarket by its Patron, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother. Here there are annually changing exhibitions of some of the best sporting pictures in the country. The Gallery was enlarged to include a Print Room and Reference Library in 1991; the latter is now a valuable research aid.

In the past the Trust has mounted loan exhibitions on 2oth Century Sporting Art, as well as separate exhibitions of the work of Cecil Aldin and Lionel Edwards in London, Paris and English provincial public galleries. This summer there will be a loan exhibition of paintings and drawings by Lowes Dalbiac Luard RBA (1872-1944) at Newmarket. Among the many Trust publications An Inventory of Sporting Art on Public Display in the United Kingdom and an up-to-date Bibliography of British Sporting Artists have proved extremely useful to anyone interest in the subject. The Trust also continues to provide grants to public galleries to help them buy sporting pictures, for conservation, and to graduate and post-graduate students.

Perhaps one of the most attractive benefits to members of the Trust is the opportunity to visit private collections of sporting art in the United Kingdom and abroad. Past countries visited include America, the Irish Republic, France, Austria, Portugal, Belgium and Spain. Closer to home, the recent AGM (22 April 2009) held at the All England Tennis Club, Wimbledon, included a lunch, a visit to the Tennis Museum and a guided tour of the whole complex with an explanation of the mechanics of the new Centre Court roof. There are also invitations to private views of exhibitions and sales of sporting art.

During my 30 or so years as a member of the Trust, I have seen it develop and grow far beyond the expectations of its founders. There are now plans for a further exciting expansion at Newmarket. Visit: www.bsat.co.uk

Thomas Blinks. Note 18.

2009-03-25T11:13:00.000-07:00

In Note 13 I mentioned a pair of paintings of Shooting Dogs by Blinks at Richard Green's last exhibition of Sporting and British Paintings. Here, I am writing a little more about Thomas Blinks (1853-1910), or Tom or Tommy Blinks as he was known to his friends. He painted hounds, hunting and steeplechasing scenes, dogs and shooting subjects - all with rather more vitality than similar pictures by his senior but near contemporary, John Emms (1841-1912). Although Blinks's paintings of shooting dogs at work now command high prices, he is not that well known despite the advantage of having many engravings published after his work, which Emms did not.

Both artists practised during an otherwise fairly bleak period of British sporting art. By bleak, I mean dull! There were few painters who satisfactorily bridged the gap between the humour and draughtsmanship of the Alkens (Henry Alken Snr. died in 1851) and a revival in this genre led by G.D. Armour (1864-1949) and Cecil Aldin (1870-1935).

Much of what we know about artist is derived from a magazine article about Blinks while he was still alive. A Master of British Sports, Mr Thomas Blinks and his Pictures, by the prolific author S.L. Bensusan, was published in The Windsor Magazine for 1908-09. Then in 1968, F. Gordon Roe wrote about Tommy Blinks in the long defunct British Racehorse. (This racing periodical contained numerous pieces on British and foreign sporting art and artists that have proved invaluable to me in writing on this theme.). Gordon Roe includes a pencil sketch of Blinks drawn by his father, Fred Roe, who was a friend of the artist. We see a slightly rotund, walrous-moustached Blinks, with short pointed beard, and quizzical eyebrows beneath a jauntily askew straw boater. He is in shirtsleeves, waistcoat, breeches and leather leggings, looking a very jolly fellow. A later more somber oil, also by Fred Roe, is illustrated in Bensusan's earlier piece. I am indebted to Messrs. Bensusan and Roe for much of the material, but not all, that I have used in this Note.

Blinks was born at Maidstone, Kent in 1853, the son of a butcher. It appears that the family then moved to Ticehurst in Sussex where young Tommy showd an aptitude for drawing at school, as well as for whipping-in for a farmer's trencher-fed pack of hounds. His father was determined to apprentice his son to a local tailor. This drove young Blinks to run away to an uncle and aunt. Swiftly returned home, Blinks senior relented.

The youthful Tommy's art education seems to have been scanty. When asked in later life how he acquired an ability to paint horses, his pithy response was simply: "Tattersalls". He was referring to the horse sales that were conducted weekly and sometimes more frequently by the firm of Tattersalls, London at what is now known as Knightsbridge Green. Newly built in 1865, the premises remained in use until 1939 when the operation was concentrated at Newmarket. Thomas's father, Richard Blinks, is described by Bensusan as a yeoman farmer, which probably meant the he butchered his own stock, and sometimes for others, as was the practice at the time. This being so, Tommy would have had the opportunity to study all types of animals from his earliest days.

By 1881, Tommy was exhibiting at the Dudley Gallery in London. In 1882, he showed A Slashing Finish (probably steeplechasing) for sale at £78. 10s. It was as a result of one of his early exhibits at the Dudley Gallery that Blinks was taken up by the print publishers Arthur Tooth & Sons. An examination of The Year's Art between October 1882 and November 1902 shows that more than forty of his paintings were published as etchings or mezzotints (and later photo engravings), most by Tooth & Sons. Their prices varied, but typically an Artist's Proof cost 5 Gns., of which 200 were printed, ensuring the artist a regular if modest annual income. From 1883 until 1904, twenty-four of his paintings were shown at the Royal Acadmey - the early pictures were sent in from Kentish Town and, when he became well established after 1886, Blinks sent them in from St John's Wood.

Among Blinks's hunting paintings is one titled The Ferry, exhibited at the RA in 1898. This memorable if slightly absurd image is of five statuesque, mounted riders surrounded by other hunt staff and hounds on a flat-bottomed craft in the middle of a fortunately slow moving and smooth river. Today, 'Health and Safety' would have a fit, and rightly so. Twenty years previously a tragedy had overtaken the York and Ainsty Hunt when a similar ferry bearing thirteen men and eleven horses capsized while crossing the River Ure at Newby. The Master, Sir Charles Slingsby, kennel huntsman Charles Orvis, and two followers were drowned. A Thomas Slingsby painted a record of this disaster. For some time Blinks's picture has been thought to be of the York and Ainsty. However, the hunt uniform is wrong, and more recent claimants have included the South Notts Hunt on the Trent and the Wheatland crossing the River Severn. The painting was engraved as part of a set of four so that, despite the very distinct portraiture of the occupants being carried, The Ferry may have been an imaginary scene. It would be a pity if Blinks was only remembered for this extraordinary painting, but once seen., it is hard to forget! In his usually more active hunting pictures, Tommy Blinks demonstrates that he can paint hunting and hounds with enormous veracity and vigour. This is partly due to his being fond of hunting himself, as he was of shooting, another sport that he painted extremely well.

As well as having a house at St John's Wood (where he died from Bright's Disease on 29 December 1910), Blinks had a farmhouse in Hertfordshire. His sporting scenes are, for the most part, set in unexciting, flat country. There is nothing much in the way of the atmosphere found in Ferneley's Leicestershire or a snowbound landscape by Alken or James Pollard, just a rather staid Home Counties flavour. This is not to denigrate his ability, but illustrates the trough into which much of British sporting art had fallen at the time. But then again, comparing the energy of much of his painting with the rather stolid ordinariness of that of Emms (who died two years after him in a whisky-induced haze), Blinks is a leader in the bleak period already explained.

Silver Racing Buttons. Note 17.

2009-03-01T03:08:00.000-08:00

I find it is the naivety and simplicity of engravings of early racehorses that give them their undoubted charm. These engravings also give vitality to accounts of the early days at Newmarket, providing an indentity to the individual animals recorded in the annals of racing. They bring to life the again slightly crudely painted beasts among Wootton's and Tilleman's "trains of running horses", or one of Seymour's paintings and engravings such as: A View of the Great Horse Match between Conqueror and Looby that was run at Newmarket on the 6th of October 1753. Seeing similar designs engraved on near-contemporary silver invites speculation on their origin.

At the end of January, Bonhams of Knightsbridge sold a set of seven (one missing) George III Irish silver circular buttons (35mm). Each was engraved with a named horse in a nearly uniform landscape, some with grooms. The horses were Black Prince, O Burn, Peeping Tom, Snip, Tinker, Bum Brusher and Bishop. The line engraving is simple, but not surprisingly so in such a small compass. The buttons were made in Dublin by IW (?) in 1787. They sold for £1,680 inclusive of buyer's premium.

Among the earliest series of racehorse portrait prints are the fourteen or so line engravings by Joseph Sympson Snr. and Jnr. after the work of Peter Tillemans (1684-1734)(6), John Wootton (c.1683-1764)(7), and one anonymous. There may have been more after Thomas Spencer (1700-1763), but I have not seen them. They were published by the Sympsons at The Dove, Drury Lane, London c.1730. In 1727 John Cheny began publishing his Historical List or Account of all the Horse Matches Run (the fore-runner of today's Racing Calendar). Cheny and Thomas Butler then published a set of thirty-four very decorative line-engraved plates of racehorses and their riders after James Seymour (c.1720-1752)(26), Wootton, one, and Spencer, four. Around each image is an account of the life and racing fame of the horse illustrated. Most were engraved by Remi Parr, one by the noted Pierre Charle Canot ARA, a Parisian who worked in London from 1740 until his death in 1777, and three by Henry Roberts, who also sold and published prints in London. They were brought out between 1741 and 1754, the last few appearing after both Cheny and Seymour had died.

At the behest of Thomas Spencer, Richard Houston engraved a series of twelve mezzotint plates of racehorses that were sold by Spencer and Robert Clee at Panton Street, Leicester Fields in March 1755 and March and April 1756. Six were after the late James Seymour and six after Spencer. The softer line and shading of the mezzotint process gave a much better portrayal of the conformation of a horse and was invaluable to silversmiths working in relief on racing trophies. Horse portrait engravings after paintings by Francis (1734-1800) and later his son, John Nost Sartorius (1759-1828), were published in both line and mezzotint, as were a number of larger racing scenes. These latter panoramas from Newmarket, Ascot and Epsom provided the example for many of the frieze-like scenes found around the lips of contemporary gold and silver racing cups. Identifying the painting or print from which a certain cup is decorated in engraved or repoussee work is a treasure hunt in itself.

Returning to the Dublin buttons: four horses (all stallions) stand looking right, three with grooms, and on the other three (and presumably the missing fourth), the horses look left - some form of double-breasted jacket or livery? Bum Brusher is ridden and the heavily rugged Bishop is being led into a loose-box by a groom, reminiscent of a Seymour drawing. One might assume that these buttons were commissioned by a single owner wishing to record the prowess of his stable. However, looking at reports of racing from 1785 to 1787, a Mr Kirwan and a Mr R.B. Daly appear to be the leading lights of the Irish turf. Among other horses, Mr Kirwan owned Snip and Daly owned Peeping Tom and Bishop. In 1785, Kirwan's Snip beat Daly's Peeping Tom in the Rutland Stakes of 200 Gns. each for 3-year-old colts at the Curragh June Meeting. The Duke of Rutland's filly by Eclipse was third. In 1784 William Pitt the Younger had sent his youthful friend, Rutland, to be Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. Rutland 'died in harness', if that is the right term, three years later, aged 33. He was 'a victim of his irregularities', dying of liver disease from over-eating and far too much port! Snip beat Peeping Tom on other occasions in the following two years. Among other victories, again at the Curragh and on 17 June 1786, Mr Connolly's Bum Brusher won His Majesty's Plate of 100 Gns.' for any horse, etc, bred in Ireland', by coming first in two four-mile heats defeating horses owned by Daly, Kirwan and four others. Mr F. Savage's Tinker and Daly's Bishop also ran in 1786, but without much success. I can find no record of Black Prince or O Burn.

Two questions arise: First, by the date they were made (1787), there were plenty of prints that the button engraver could have followed, although none seem to have been published in Ireland. What prints were copied - if any? Second, who commissioned these buttons (and why) depicting eight stallions that seem to have had different owenrs?

So far, these Notes have elicited few Comments. They can easily be made on their content by pressing "Comment". Perhaps on this occasion somebody will come to my aid.

The Snow Storm. Note 16

2009-02-05T08:32:00.000-08:00

Seventeenth and eighteenth century painters from the Low Countries were more fluent in depicting the flurries we are currently experiencing than their few contemporary British cousins. Previously a setting for some winter activity, it was a hundred years later that British artists made an extensive snow-clad scene a subject in itself, sometimes animated by a bird or group of hardy ewes (for example the Scot, Joseph Farqhuarson (1846-1935), whose painting Beneath the Snow Encumbered Branches went unsold last December with an estimate of £150,000-250,000!). Another hundred years and the stark outlines of snow-laden trees, field and hill patterns gave inspiration to painters interested in exploring the almost geometric nature of snow-bound landscape: Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868-1929), C.R.W. Nevinson (1889-1946), his exact contemporary Paul Nash, and Paul's younger brother, John. Also Eric Ravilious (1903-1941). So far as the sporting artist is concerned, an impetus to paint snow arrived at Christmas, 1836.

But before that time, the name Julius Caesar Ibbotson (1759-1817) springs to mind. Usually painting in watercolour, his figures glide over the ice with great panache knowing how well the artist will depict them and their tumbling friends. Portraying a usually less well-to-do strata of rustic England, George Morland (1763-1804) stands head and shoulders above his near contemporaries. He painted the countryside with an unerring ease and atmosphere, often among the rural poor: the farmyard buildings with snow-capped thatch, a frozen trough, stamping shaggy horses, and sheep brought in to shelter. Although beautifully painted these pictures were not popular in their day, and even now are treated with some disparagement, best used as Christmas cards. The Alken family, Joseph Barker (fl.1840s) and Thomas Smythe (1825-1906) worked in the same vein. The last two painted in East Anglia where we have come to think there is more snow than elsewhere, except Scotland.

As far as I can discover from our limited knowledge there is no correlation between the actual weather and a consequent dash for the paint-box - apart from in 1836. In the early autumn of that year a correspondent of the Penny Magazine wrote that there had been an extraordinary lack of snow since 1832. So sorely to have tempted Providence, even before winter had set in, seems with hindsight to have been extremely foolish. Providence rose to the challenge and, not satisfied with arranging a snowstorm the violence of which had not been experienced for a hundred years, she orchestrated a hurricane and floods as well.

The hurricane occurred on November 29. In London the ball and cross of St Paul's was seen to vibrate. Blackfriars Bridge was damaged and the wind caught the skirts of ladies crossing London Bridge throwing them violently against the parapets. In Kensington Gardens, 50 mature lime trees were uprooted and at Brighton a platform of the Chain Pier was lifted by a strong gust and snapped. The hurricane lasted only a few hours, and the weather was reassuringly mild until Christmas. 'The Snow Storm', as it was reported at the time, started on Christmas Eve, obliterating the normal outlines of the countryside and generally bringing life to a standstill. Fears of many fatalities were happily unfounded, but the storm did not abate until December 30. However the opportunity to tell the stories of coaches stranded in ten-foot drifts, while the guards 'got through' with the mail against all odds, was too much for artists such as James Pollard (1792-1867) and Charles Cooper Henderson (1803-1877) to resist. Writers were of the same opinion. Having hung out 'a flag of distress - a red wipe', Mr Jorrocks had to be manhandled out of an upstairs window of his Brighton inn. 'The storm stopped all wisiting,' he reported. 'And even the Countess of Winterton's ball was obliged to be put off.'

James Pollard was the master of the animated snow scene. His precise depiction of carriages in a snow-drifting or flooded landscape gives enormous pleasure. Some will say condescendingly that these pictures are no more than 'decorative' objects. True, but in their nearly naive way, they have life as well (Lowry?). Nostalgia comes into our liking of them, and one must remember that what is painted, happened. In 1836 Cooper Henderson was living near Bracknell and well able to see the havoc created on those early roads to the West by the snow. While less decorative than pictures by Pollard, Henderson's ability to paint a coach at speed is second to none. In this field the work of the Shayer family of painters (and of Herring Snr. and Jnr.) deserve recognition, but there is stiffness that leaves them some way behind.

Jumping forward to the twentieth century, Alfred Munnings produced some dazzling landscapes and pictures of hounds exercising in snow. These were mainly painted before the dreadful winter of 1947 when Britain was held in a snow and icy grip for a period of three months while struggling to overcome the debilitating effects of the War. Today, the unpopularity of hunting by those perceived to buy art results in there being few artists attempting to paint this sport, except for 'retiring' portraits. Snow appears in the occasional steeplchase scene, but nobody really wants to be reminded of the cold in our snug and centrally heated life. We therefore fall back on nostalgia. Those Pollard paintings and prints that make our present inconvenience seem very minor, make snow look positively cheerful!

Margaret Collyer 1872-1945. Note 15

2009-01-28T06:25:00.000-08:00

The animal and genre painter Margaret Collyer published her autobiography, An Artist's Life, in 1935, without illustrations. She was then living in Kenya. Over a period of years (and with some minor assitance from the British Sporting Art Trust) her twin great-nieces, Mrs Susan Duke and Mrs Veronica Bellers, have gathered over fifty photographs of the artist's oil paintings and drawings to add to the original text, giving the new edition the title: A Vivid Canvas. This book was brought out by Librario Publishing Ltd., Kinloss, Scotland at the end of last year.

Miss Collyer's life was divided into almost equal parts. The first part, 1872 to 1915, was spent as a child, student and professional artist in England; in the second she lived in Kenya as a pioneer farmer mainly in the foothills of the Aberdare Mountains where she had less opportunity to paint. She was not a part of the 'Happy Valley' set!

This Note, or review, of A Vivid Canvas is concerned with Miss Collyer's life in England before 1915. From her early years she enjoyed painting only a little less than she loved animals, but she had little tuition. When eighteen she went occasionally to the Animal Painter's Studio in Gower Street, London where "I learn't nothing." In 1891 she spent some time in Dusseldorf ostensibly to study animal painting under Herr Rochell, known as the 'Battle painter to the Kaiser'. Again this was not a success, although she developed an appreciation of music. Miss Collyer is reticent about her home life. Shortly after returning from Germany she reports that "one evening my father and I agreed to part". She saddled her horse and off she rode that same night to stay temporarily with her grandmother in Godalming!

The need to earn a living became imperative as did the need to improve her painting skills. Returning to Gower Street, she lodged for a time with Mr and Mrs Alexander Cooper whose Animal Painter's Studio had all but closed. Alexander Cooper was the eldest son of the noted battle, animal and sporting painter Abraham Cooper RA (1787-1868). Both Alexander and his wife, Maria, painted. For his part he exhibited history, genre and some sporting paintings at the RA from 1837 to 1888; Maria exhibited pictures of fruit and flowers. Miss Collyer accepted Alexander Cooper's kindly advice that while she had a great facility for painting animals, she lacked training. This criticism was later echoed by the eminant Frank Dicksee who went so far as to say that Margaret's art was beyond correction! Taking up this challenge, Miss Collyer set about working for a scholarship at the Royal Academy Schools. She attended the Pelham Street School of Art where her tutors (Arthur Cope and Watson Nicol) specialised in preparing students for entry to the RA Schools. While at Pelham Street and later at the RA Schools, Miss Collyer lived at Alexandra House, near the Albert Hall. This marvellous institution provided women students of music and painting with a room and food for £60 per annum. It is probable that Miss Collyer was at her happiest during this period.

With £60 and the cost of her materials and other small necessities to be found, Miss Collyer undertook commissions during her holidays where and whenever she could. A more unusual patron was a lady living in the Midlands who owned a pack of harriers, a couple of which she wanted portrayed. While changing trains at Coventry, Miss Collyer bought a Scottish deerhound for £8 from a complete stranger! On the arrival of these two, her patron proved to be a delightful if very eccentric woman. After dinner she would dress as a Highlander, "kilt, bare knees, dirk, sporran, plaid ...... and a bonnet on the side of her head." With Margaret playing the piano she then danced reels with her similarly attired butler for exactly one hour - for the exercise. Other patrons were less charismatic and felt that, when not painting, an artist's place was in the servant's hall. Miss Collyer soon put them right on that score!

After graduating from the RA Schools, Margaret Collyer found a London studio and quickly gained commissions, sometimes via relations and friends of her family. Her boon companions throughout her life were a series of dogs with whom she had many adventures. She had one or two paintings accepted by the Royal Academy each year from 1897 until 1910. Their titles reflected the typical Victorian and Edwardian sentiment of the day, without giving one any idea of the subject matter: Nothing ventured, nothing gained, 1898, or Silence is deep as eternity, speech is as shallow as time, 1903. Two Academy pictures are illustrated in A Vivid Canvas: Nonplussed, 1900 (a terrier examining a hedgehog) and Scottie and Khaki, 1905 (the latter dog is a West Highland Terrier). She was painting many horses at the same period and it would have been interesting to see reproductions of her portrait of Manifesto, winner of the Grand National in 1897 and 1898, or Jenkinstown who won the same race in 1910. As an aside that can be levelled at many books where paintings are reproduced, it is disappointing that no dimensions are given. Without these it is difficult to discover the scale that the artist favoured or imagine the impact of the painting on the wall, which is a pity.

A Vivid Canvas provides a self-portrait of the artist painted in 1929. We see a rather severe, spectacled, face beneath a head of cropped hair of the period. What is quite evident from the text is that Margaret Collyer was a forthright, outspoken woman who did not suffer fools at all. She obviously had immense determination, energy and courage, but perhaps she was a person whom one would approach carefully before venturing one's own opinion on any canine or art matter!

At the outbreak of the 1914 War, Margaret Collyer immediately went to Boulagne to be a nurse in an Allied Hospital. In the spring of 1915, the hospital was closed and it was then that her sister, Olive, suggested that Margaret should join her in Kenya. This she did, but after a time attempted to return to France but found that travel was forbidden. After working with her sister on her farm near Nairobi, she decided to set up on her own account in the foothills of the Aberdares. There was less time to paint, but a very sympathetic portrait of Lord Delamere still hangs in the Muthaiga Club, Nairobi, and other work is scattered throughout the country. Her interest in dogs remained constant, and the Margaret Collyer Challenge Cup for the Best Terrier is still competed for annually at the Nairobi Kennel Club. The chapters on Miss Collyer's life in Kenya are equally absorbing and will be of immense interest to 'old Kenya hands'.

Margaret Collyer is of a different mould to that which we consider a sporting artist usually comes. She does not fit in with her contemporaries: Cecil Aldin, Munnings, Lionel Edwards and F.A. Stewart, or for that matter with Lucy Kemp-Welch. However, this new book provides not only an insight into the subject's art and the popularity of her work as a painter of dogs, horses and people in her day, but also a fascinating portrayal of a student and artist's life in the early part of the Twentieth Century.

Lambert's Leap. Note 14

2008-12-10T08:51:00.000-08:00

Not having described the criteria for what would or would not appear in these Notes and Queries, I feel a little less guilty than perhaps I should in introducing an account of the print "Lambert's Leap". This Note also allows me to write a little about the artist, engraver and publisher, Robert Pollard, who recorded this extraordinary accident. Before I begin, I must acknowledge the late N.C.(Bobby) Selway whose interest in and knowledge of the Pollard family was second-to-none, and of James Pollard in particular. His research led to the publication of three books: The Regency Road (1957), James Pollard (1965), and The Golden Age of Coaching and Sport (1972). The last two books were published by the eccentric Frank Lewis of Leigh-on-Sea, whose by-line included that he was publisher "by Appointment to the late Queen Mary." While many others have written about the Pollards, Bobby Selway was pre-eminent in describing and recording the activities of this artistic family.

The mezzotint Lambert's Leap (25 x 17.75 inches) appeared in Dominic Winter's recent sale (3 December) that included Old Master Drawings and Prints. Lambert's Leap is hardly an Old Master, but its early date (1786) allowed its inclusion. Due to its date it preceded eleven far more distinguished lots after George Stubbs (the reason for my viewing the sale): Two Tygers; Phillis, a Pointer of Lord Clermont; The Spanish Pointer; A French Fox Dog; Gimcrack (mezzo); Brood Mares (very serene); Gamekeepers and Labourers; Sweet William; Stallion and Mare; Pumpkin; and another Gimcrack (stipple, printed in reverse having been copied from the mezzo). They were published between 1788 and 1796. Jumping forward to the early twentieth century, there was also a nice group of etchings by the naturalist artist, C.F. Tunnicliffe (1901-1979).

Lambert's Leap shows a horse that has shed its rider - or more accurately, a rider who has shed his horse. The legend beneath the plate relates:

"The accident above represented happened some time ago to Mr Cuthbert Lambert of Newcastle upon Tyne, whose horse, as he was endeavouring to turn him, at full speed, across Sandiford Stone Bridge, leapt the battlement & fell about 20 feet to the bed of the Water. The Horse died in consequence of the Fall, but the young Gentleman was providentially caught in the Branches of an old Ash, where he hung by his Hands, till some Passenger got him down safely. The place has been ever since call'd Lambert's Leap, and the name engaven on the Battlement to commemorate the Fact."

More information can be gleaned from the smaller (11 x 9 inches) lithographic example illustrated in Maggs, Rare Books, website. The incident apparently occurred in the Heaton district of Newcastle on 20 September 1759. Cuthbert Lambert, described as a dashing young Customs Officer, allowed his nameless mount to leap over the parapet falling into a ravine beneath the bridge. While doing so, Lambert grabbed two convenient branches and is shown suspended as his horse, legs tucked neatly beneath its body, falls away to the river bed below. While the description on the mezzotint speaks of Lambert "endeavouring to turn his horse, at full speed", it has also been suggested that the rider was "trying to impress the young ladies of the parish out strolling." There is certainly one such, bonneted, peering anxiously over the parapet.

The author of this remarkable scene is Robert Pollard, born in nearby Newcastle just four years before the accident. As a boy, he may often have heard the story and perhaps gone to the spot and saw "Lambert's Leap" "cut in the coping stone of the battlement". The bridge has long since been replaced, but the inscription remains.

Robert Pollard came to London from Newcastle in 1774. He had been apprenticed to a silversmith but soon became a pupil of the artist Richard Wilson who taught him to draw and paint. Later, he was taught etching by Isaac Taylor before establishing himself as an engraver and publisher at 15 Braynes Row, Spa Field, Islington in 1781. Robert spent many of his early years in London engraving. The first plate published from Braynes Row was of The Dogger Bank after the marine artist Dominic Serres. Lambert's Leap comes during a fairly bare period for Robert as either an engraver or publisher. Apart from engraving two sporting dogs after Sawrey Gilpin in 1788, Robert's many subsequent works in this field were not published until the early 1800s. From 1810 until shortly before his death in 1838, Robert devoted much of his time to publishing and to teaching his younger son, James Pollard (1792-1867), engraving before the youth turned almost exclusively to painting to earn his living.

The mezzotint of Lambert's Leap was engraved by Philip Dawe (b.1750), a painter and engraver of portraits and decorative subjects. In his Artists of the English School, Samuel Redgrave describes Dawe's pictures as "common and vulgar in their humour"! Philip had two sons: George Dawe RA (1781-1829) and Henry Edward Dawe (1790-1848) who also painted and engraved. George Dawe was the better known as a history and portrait painter. He amassed a vast fortune during time spent in Russia but then lost much of it "by his greed as a money-lender, which was followed by litigation and losses" - Redgrave. The smaller lithograph, or possibly soft-ground etching, was drawn by William P. Sherlock, a little-known painter and engraver of the early to mid-nineteenth century. He was also the son of an equally obscure engraver, William Sherlock, whose father was a Dublin prizefighter.

The print at Dominic Winter's sale (estimate £150-£200), which may have appeared at Christie's earlier this year, sold for £120. The low price for this 'interesting' scene (the horse staggered a few paces before expiring) may reflect the comparatively unattractive subject. It was also trimmed to the image, further diminishing its value. However, such anecdotal records are unusual and were printed in small numbers, so need to be cherished. I hope this one found an understanding home. Who knows, it may even outlive the coping stone inscription that could end up in a rockery far from Newcastle!

Sporting Paintings at Richard Green. Note 13.

2008-11-05T11:14:00.000-08:00

Sadly the years seem to have passed when, each autumn, Richard Green was able to fill his Gallery at 147 New Bond Street, W1S with fine sporting paintings. Long, long ago, Ackermann, held the same type of annual exhibition, before the bankers pulled the rug from under their feet the night before their show opened! In Richard Green's exhibition of Sporting and British Paintings opening on 12 November there are fourteen sporting pictures, a number of sea- and landscapes, as well as four brilliant portraits. Few as the sporting pictures are, what is on show is of the highest quality, (bar two!). It may be that the demand for quality is the limiting factor in terms of number. However, there have been some interesting paintings for sale during the past six months, not least those that came originally from the Pitt Rivers family recently sold by Bonhams: a Wootton, a Spencer and a pair by Francis Sartoriuses (1734-1804).

In Bond Street, James Seymour's 1750 oil of the Duke of Kingston's racehorse Jolly Roger led by a mounted groom in a wooded landscape has a marvellous tranquillity about it, unlike the lives of the horse's owner, or for that matter the artist. The 'un-showiness' harks back to some of Seymour's early drawings, and perhaps to those pencilled by a Bernard Lens (there were four of them) whose authorship remains confusing. The bony bodies and angular heads for which Seymour is well known came later. This picture was part of the recent dispersal by Christie's of the late Simon Sainsbury's wide-ranging collections.

John Nost Sartorius (Note 10) is represented by a delightfulHunt in Full Cry (1812), and a pair of slightly larger (28 x 36 inches) paintings: A Hunt Breaking Cover and another Hunt in Full Cry (each 1813). The first (25 x 30 inches) reminds one of the much earlier (1781) Full Cry by the same artist and with a very similar composition, in the James Harvey British Art Sporting Exhibition in Langton Street, SW10. At various distances, the riders emerge from a lightly wooded hillside following their well-matched pack of hounds, right to left. In the distance, the wily Charlie doubles back left to right. This pleasing compositional formula allows an appreciation of distance that is often lacking in Ferneley's long friezes of hunt scurries that I feel are rather overrated. However, there is nothing overrated in the two paintings by John Ferneley in the Richard Green exhibition. They are extremely fine equestrian portraits. One is of a quiet, almost intimate, scene of the mounted Master John Marriot taking leave of his young sister outside a rose-bowered door, painted in 1832. The other is a much grander affair of Captain James Ogilvie Fairlea with his grooms and hunters - or should it be hunters and grooms? Captain Fairlea of Williamfield House, Coodham, Ayrshire was plainly a 'good egg'. Among his many attributes, he assisted the Earl of Eglinton in mounting the great, rain-soaked, Tournament in honour of Queen Victoria's accession to the throne in 1839. But he does look a little bit pleased with himself!

Continuing in chronological order of the artists' lives, there is an unnamed Master of the Royal Buckhounds flying over rails on his grey hunter by G.H. Laporte, c.1835-40; and a pretty, yet determined-looking, Lady Victoria Leveson-Gower (aged nine) on her galloping pony, by Sir Francis Grant PRA. In Note 4 I wrote of my interest in the bravura painting of A Gentleman with his Groom driving a Tandem on the Road to London, 1828, by Benjamin Herring Snr. (1806-1830). This painting was sold at Christie's in London on 23 May this year, and can now be seen again at Richard Green - no doubt with an added premium! I am no closer to discovering whether the smart young 'whip' is a member of a Somerset county Bridges family or not but, whoever he is, he definitely deserves a name to complete the story of this fine painting by the short-lived Ben Herring. This is followed by two sedate hunters by the Home Counties favourite, William Barraud, and a typical group of vignettes in one frame by W.J. Shayer. There are also two farmyard scenes by Ben Herring's nephew, J.F. Herring Jnr. that have the familiarity of the tops of biscuit tins. Are they sporting paintings?

The pair of paintings of English Pointers and English Setters by Thomas Blinks (1853-1910) tell us what a good artist he could be. In 1908, S.L. Bensusan wrote about Tommy Blinks in the obscure Windsor Magazine. The title of his article was: A Master of British Sports, and so he was during this otherwise dull period of English sporting painting. In 1968, F. Gordon Roe wrote: "thickset, rubicund, trimly bearded, Blinks brought to his marked ability as a painter a practical experience of horse-flesh and sporting life". And, back to the Windsor Magazine: "at the age of nine or ten" he "was whipper-in for a neighbouring farmer's trencher-fed pack" in Kent. Blinks painted many hunting and steeplechasing pictures but today it is his portraits of hounds and dogs that are most highly sought after, vying with those by his contemporary, John Emms. I must write about Blinks one day.

Last among the sporting pictures is Munnings's Winter Sunshine: Huntsman by a Covert. It was apparently painted in about 1913. While prolific all his life, Munnings was in top gear at this date, and it shows in this impressionist picture, in his favourite canvas size: 20 x 24 inches. Brilliantly 'lit', the wood in the background is sketched with rapid brush strokes; the horse and scarlet-coated huntsman are alert to their tasks. Munnings pulled out this wonderful small study from his studio to exhibit at the Royal Academy in 1956, three years before he died.

I mentioned four portraits at the beginning of this piece. They are by Allan Ramsay, George Romney, Angelica Kauffman RA, and Sir Thomas Lawrence PRA. The Kauffman is a small oval canvas of Theresa Parker, aged about three years. It is a little insipid, but the child's face is beautifully portrayed. The other paintings are of proud men and, by Lawrence, of a golden youth. This last, a half-length, is of the Hon. Frederick William Stewart, later 4th Marquess of Londonderry (1805-1872). Well known from both exhibitions and literature, this painting is cause enough alone to visit the exhibition.

Whistlejacket & Scrub at Leeds Art Gallery. Note 12.

2008-10-27T14:51:00.000-07:00

The current exhibition: WHISTLEJACKET & SCRUB: Large as Life, The Great Paintings of Stubbs at Leeds Art Gallery (ending on 9 November) gives us an opportunity to examine two magnificent levade-action paintings by George Stubbs. The exhibition also provides a rare chance to see the painting of Scrub (Halifax Collection) in its newly cleaned and restored condition, and to consider why the Marquess of Rockingham commissioned Stubbs to paint both horses in this haute ecole exercise.

The exhibition is accompanied by a highly informative catalogue edited by Kerry Harker that includes a fascinating account of Scrub's restoration. At the time of the publication of Judy Egerton's Catalogue Raisonne, George Stubbs, Painter, the picture of Scrub was being cleaned. Numerous layers of overpainting have been removed and while the conformation of the horse remains the same, the landscape background is softened and, although thinly painted, has a more natural colour. In her book, Mrs Egerton speculates that during cleaning evidence might come to light that the original size of the painting was probably the same as that of Whistlejacket, (both pictures painted c.1762). In the height of the painting this is proved to be the case; in the width, nearly so. What has also come to light during restoration is that the join of the two unequal-sized vertical strips of canvas used to make each picture lies on opposite sides, over the rump of the horse, avoiding a later appearing seam bisecting the head as each animal looks left or right. A similar ground colour is used in both paintings which, with other evidence, suggests that Rockingham conceived these two pictures as a pair. Although there is some contemporary evidence supporting the view that Whistlejacket was painted before Scrub, it is Mrs Egerton's view that Scrub was painted first. What remains unexplained is why Rockingham rejected the painting of Scrub. The picture was returned to the artist without any apparent ill-feeling arising between Stubbs and the Marquess. After many vicissitudes (including considerable damage), the painting was in the artist's studio sale in 1807 where it was bought by his benefactor and then executor Isabella Saltonstall for £52. 10s. (50 guineas).

Two other questions arise. Why were these pictures painted at all? And why was the levade position chosen? There is supposition, again from contemporary sources, that Whistlejacket was to have carried a portrait of George III, that is until Rockingham had a political difference with the new King. Scrub is also favoured as the Royal charger according to Osiaz Humphry, Stubbs's friend and quasi-biographer. There is no conclusive evidence either way.

Stubbs painted very few pictures of moving horses. The Grosvenor Hunt painted c.1761/62 is one such painting. This large picture (59 x 95 inches) is all action with, in the background, the presumed hunt member Mr Bell Lloyd putting his horse (too close) to jump, cat-like, a five-bar gate. The position is that of Scrub and Whistlejacket with the forelegs tucked in to avoid their rapping the top bar of the gate. Perhaps there is a little more 'coiled spring' in the hunter's hindquarters than could be sustained for a few seconds in a well-executed levade in a riding school. This painting shows Stubbs's undoubted ability, slightly stiff as it may appear to today's observer, to paint a horse in movement. What is not known is why Rockingham wished that two of his only moderately successful racehorses, then at stud, should be portrayed in this unexpected way.

Rockingham at Wentworth was a neighbour of the Duke of Portland at Welbeck (see Note 11), and must have been familiar (as probably was Stubbs) with the life-sized pictures of horses at Welbeck Abbey. Painted by an unknown British artist, and probably copied from earlier European examples, these pictures illustrated a number of equine exercise positions, including the levade. It seems perfectly possible that they gave Rockingham the idea for paintings of his own horses on a similar grand scale, with or without an intended rider.

Let me now speculate! In the past and today it is often the practice of an artist to be painting more than one picture at a time, flitting from one to another as inspiration directs him. Could not Rockingham have asked Stubbs to paint a pair of Welbeck-style horse portraits? Two canvases of the same proportions were prepared, their surfaces sized with the same yellow grounding. Both paintings progressed well, and then at some point the Marquess was bowled over by the vitality of the image of Whistlejacket, far superior to the albeit beautifully painted Scrub. He decides then and there that Stubbs should complete only the former. "Forget Scrub", he says. Blow the King and every other theory! A simplistic answer perhaps, but one that seems to fit many of the now substantiated facts.

Footnote. Among the other excellent essays in the catalogue, there is an invaluable survey of a number of racing terms: "distancing", "weight for age", "heat racing", etc., by today's great authority on racing history and collaborater in many aspects of this exhibition, David Oldrey.

George Stubbs at Creswell Crags. Note 11.

2008-09-30T13:25:00.000-07:00

For those interested in the paintings of George Stubbs, there is a small but jewel-like exhibition of some of the artist's oils and engravings at the Harley Gallery, Mansfield Road, Welbeck, Nottinghamshire. Nearby Creswell Crags forms the setting for four paintings and two engravings by and after Stubbs, and there are a further two superb oils relating to the 3rd Duke of Portland at Welbeck Abbey. The exhibition continues until 21 December.

The Harley Gallery has produced an excellent pamphlet comprising two Essays. The first is on Horse Portraits in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Britain; and the second: George Stubbs and Creswell Crags. They are written by Karen Hearn of Tate Britain and Stephen Daniels, Professor of Cultural Geography, Nottingham University.

This note deals primarily with my Creswell Crags, but first a brief comment on the rise of English horse portraiture from its early European origins. Among those earlier horse portraits, or more accurately portraits of some types of horses, are those commissioned by William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle, known for his passion for riding and schooling the horse. The pictures appear in a 1695 inventory as "12 horse pictures and 12 Caesars [busts]" being in the hall at Welbeck. The paintings were life-size and probably date from 1620-1630. There are five in the exhibition, some showing the horse in the rampant pose. Perhaps by using a large reproduction, it would have been of interest to compare them with Stubbs's Scrub, a bay horse belonging to the Marquess of Rockingham c.1762 (Earl of Halifax), a painting that Rockingham commissioned but then refused to accept. From this work one might believe that horse portraiture had failed to advance very much since those painted by Europeans 140 years before. The well-known Whistlejacket, in similar pose and painted only a few years later eradicates that criticism of Stubbs's ability. The essay takes us through the years to the work of John Wootton whose Warren Hill, at Newmarket c.1715 and The Bloody-Shouldered Arabian,c.1723 are in the exhibition.

Before embarking on Creswell Crags mention must also be made of two other marvellous paintings by Stubbs in the exhibition. They are the portrait group of the 3rd Duke of Portland riding out past the Riding School at Welbek Abbey, exhibited in 1767; and The 3rd Duke of Portland with his brother Lord Edward Bentinck watching a groom training a horse at a jumping bar, c.1767-68. They are large paintings of similar size, approx. 40 x 50 inches. Both are delightful, even if it is a little difficult to reconcile the figure of the slightly portly looking aristocrat (perhaps it is just his 'seat') in the first painting to the slim 33 or 34year-old Duke in the second!

It is thought that the Marquess of Rockingham of Wentworth Woodhouse, who had been employing Stubbs for some time, may have introduced the artist to his neighbour, the Duke of Portland at Welbeck Abbey. In so doing, the artist could have visited Creswell Crags in the first or second years of the 1760s.

In 1765, a little after Stubbs had started using the Crags as the setting for a number of portraits of horses, Mrs Mary Delany, amateur artist, portrait painter, author of a Flora, and a favourite of George III and his Queen, made a sketch of the ravine and outcrops, writing: "It is a little Matlock; two ranges of rocks, towering as it were in rivalship of one another, feathered with wood, embossed with ivy, diversified with caves and cliffs." There is no doubt the place made a considerable impression on Stubbs, although on surprisingly few other arists at the time. The 'Creswell Crags'paintigs in the exhibiton are:

(1) Horse devoured by a Lion, c.1762/63, exhibited in 1763. (Tate Britain).
(2) A grey hack with a groom and greyhound, Creswell Crags,c.1762. (Tate Britain).
(3) The Duke of Ancaster's Turkish horse with a Turkish groom at Creswell Crags, c.1763/64. (Private Collection).
(4) The Marquess of Rockingham's Arabian stallion held by a groom at Creswell Crags, c.1765/66. (National Museums of Scotland).

In (2) to (4) the painting of the Crags with water below is very similar. In (1) (the earliest painting), the Crags are in the distance while a shaded rocky cave provides a convenient hideout from which the lion springs onto the horse's neck. As Judy Egerton points out in a Burlington Magazine article and in her monumental George Stubbs, Painter (Yale, 2007), earlier versions of this theme in the Paul Mellon Collection and National Gallery of Victoria, Australia have "less convincing" settings (comparatively open country; but would one any more expect to find a lion in Mrs Delany's caves at Creswell Crags? Remarkably, some thousands of years before the answer would have been, Yes). The painting in the Mellon Collection, Lion attacking a Horse was apparently paid for by Rockingham in December 1762 pointing to Stubbs first visiting the Crags in that year or in early 1763. In a painting of A stallion called Romulus in the possession of the Rt. Hon. Lord Viscount Spencer, Stubbs's first exhibit at the Society of Artists in 1761 also has an idealised background of rock and water, but it requires too great a stretch of the imagination to believe this too is Creswell Crags. A painting of Mares and Foals in a craggy landscape , c.1767 (Macclesfield Collection)(not in this exhibition) is one of the finest of Stubbs's series of mares and foals pictures. Here, the artist steps back a little, perhaps to one end of the Creswell gorge showing a single rock towering to the left with cottages below and an expanse of water to the right. This is an almost identical setting (apart from some detail among the cottages, farm or mill buildings) to that given to the first of Stubbs's four paintings of Shooting. The four engravings have been lent by the British Sporting Art Trust and Plate 1, Two Gentlemen going a Shooting, 1769, allows this similarity to be seen. Also at the Harley Gallery, is a mezzotint of The Brown Horse Mask [Marske], 1771, where a cottage precariously surmounts a rocky crag.

Stubbs was obviously inspired greatly by the features and atmosphere of this small ravine, one side in Derbyshire, the other in Nottinghamshire, since for eight years (1762-1770), he used it on so many occasions as the setting for some of his more romantic paintings. And for the next 11 weeks this fascination can be explored at the Harley Gallery.

The Sartoriuses. Note 10

2008-09-03T07:12:00.000-07:00

Occasionally the name of an artist or, in this case, the names of three generations of artists, stick in the mind and - hey presto! - you seem to see the painters' work wherever you happen to be looking. I seem to be surrounded by the Sartoriuses. Bonhams, Knightsbridge have a forthcoming sale of Sporting and Ornithological Pictures (plus some delightfully primitive livestock paintings). There is a portrait of the racehorse Bay Malton by Francis Sartorius and a pair of Otter Hunting pictures by his grandson, John Francis Sartorius. The second immage of the pair will appeal to few except those interested in the history of field sports and the bygone custom of 'poling' or 'staffing' the otter.

The Sartorius family originally came from Nuremburg. However, John, the father of Francis Sartorius arrived in England in the early eighteenth century from Bavaria. John Sartorius painted in a naive style and little of his work is known now in England. Francis Sartorius (1734-1804) continued in the manner of his father who was also his tutor. He painted a few equestrian portraits and more of racehorses, dogs and a few cart and carriage scenes. These pictures are painted in a comparatively small scale compared with the rendering of similar subjects by John Wootton, James Seymour and Francis's near contemporary, George Stubbs. All the Sartoriuses lacked the panache and fluidity of these earlier 'masters'. However, there are many charming paintings by Francis, and nearly all provide information on the country pursuits of their time. In the Sporting Magazine of 1804 an obituary of Francis's life states that he had "married and co-habited with five successive wives". Among their children was John Nost (or Nott) Sartorius (1759-1828). J.N. Sartorius exhibited more than 100 paintings at the Free Society (where his father had also shown pictures) and at the Royal Academy. He was immensely prolific and his work was engraved and even copied repouse or etched on racing gold cups. Many of his scenes are well composed and there is little doubt that the format of his hunting and racing pictures was the examplar for Samuel and Henry Alken a generation later. This was at a time when John Francis Sartorius (c.1775-1831), one of J.N's sons, was also busy painting similar work to that of his father. Like his father, he too exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy. His portraiture of humans was not his forte! But his pictures of field sports and of dogs, shooting and a few game birds is decorative, to say the least.

My second note on this family comes from a wall-full of Sartorius paintings in what is called the Porch Bedroom at Antony House, Torpoint, Cornwall. The house now belongs to the National Trust (with good Jan Wyck and John Wootton hunting scenes), but the Sartoriuses, while on view to the public, belong to the Carew-Pole family. They were brought to Antony in the late 1920s from a Pole family house, Shute in Devon, (for some reason, now called Shute Barton by the National Trust). The majority of these paintings are by J.N. Sartorius and, most interestingly, were owned by a Sir John William de la Pole of Shute at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

A third sighting of the Sartoriuses lies in the future. The work of Francis, John Nost and John Francis Sartorius can be seen in An Exhibition of Sporting Art at James Harvey British Art, 15 Langton Street, SW10 from 9 to 25 October 2008. There are five paintings by Francis Sartorius: three of racehorses, one hunter and a lovely picture of Shooting over Pointers in a tree-dotted park with house and lake beyond. Naive? Yes, but it is an atmospheric and probably accurate depiction of a favourite country pastime. Among the contributions by J.N. Sartorius there is another Shooting over Pointers - a closer scene in a woodland setting with a gentleman and his keeper out shooting. painted forty or even fifty years after Francis completed his picture: note the changes in dress. There are a further six or more paintings of hunting and racing by J.N. Sartorius. There is just one oil by John Francis, J.N. Sartorius's son. This again is of shooting. Two gentleman set out with their spaniels to walk up whatever game they can find. This is an even more intimate scene as the two men confer and the dogs become impatient, perhaps painted at much the same period as the picture by his father.

In passing, the James Harvey exhibition includes a small and fascinating collection of ten paintings and one watercolour by Sir Alfred Munnings. For the most part these pictures give us an idea of what Munnings enjoyed painting most (including a White Canoe - see Note 9) rather than the B & B swagger equestrian portraits whose fees allowed the artist to live as he wished. There is also a small group of paintings by the talented contemporary artist, Charles Church.

Returning to the Sartoriuses,their merit as artists was not very great. However, their reporting of the manners and ways of hunting, racing and shooting and their portraiture of dogs and other animals in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries provides an invaluable and highly decorative record. And then the Alkens came along.

The White Canoe, by Sir Alfred Munnings. Note 9

2008-08-02T01:33:00.000-07:00

While two series of paintings usually called "The White Canoe" may not strictly speaking be described as sporting pictures, their painter, Sir Alfred Munnings, was the most important sporting artist of the 20th Century.

Recently I have been trying to disentangle which painting is which of this title. In doing so, partly by chance, I have been able to speak to two of the models that Munnings used to decoratively sit for him in his later series painted between 1938 and 1953. Among both series, a few are described in the artist's three-volume autobiography: An Artist's Life; Second Burst; and The Finish. A number were exhibited at the Royal Academy but since the RA catalogues did not at the time show dimensions this of only a little help. The slim annuals, Royal Academy Illustrated, show some of the paintings but, again, rarely give sizes.

There were at least four pictures in the first series. These were painted soon after Munnings's second marriage to Violet McBride, a noted horsewoman, who quickly brought some order to the artist's previously successful but rather racketty life. All the paintings show a white Canadian canoe on the River Stour near Castle House, Dedham, their home. The smallest of the four (12 x 16 inches) that I have been able to identify is a panel showing Violet Munnings vigorously paddling herself along the tree-lined river, right to left. Another, named The River, is a less energetic scene, again right to left, of a contemplative Violet in front with a friend paddling behind her - both are hatted. Different to the two described, the composition of both the third and fourth painting is the same, but with the movement left to right. In both, Violet is in front. In one without a hat with her friend behind, paddling, hatted. In the second both are paddling and hatted. The smaller of these two paintings was exhibited at the RA in 1924, and the larger version at the International Exhibition, Pittsburgh, in the same year.

Fourteen years later Munnings returned to this theme. There are at least six versions of this essentially same scene excepting the different models whom he used, and some changes of title. The composition is now of the canoe moving (in fact firmly staked) left to right on a hot summer afternoon. In these pictures the warm colouring, dappled light and staccato brushwork of the foliage show the artist at his impressionistic best. Five versions were exhibited at the RA: 1940 (Drifting); 1944 and 1946 (The White Canoe); 1948 (September Afternoon); 1953 (The White Canoe); and repeated in 1956, September Afternoon, 1939, Version 4. In each of these paintings there is a very pretty, dark haired girl in a red silk dress holding a pink parasol. Munnings made a number of studies of her in 1938 that he used in all his subsequent pictures in this series, since she was living in France by 1939. I am most grateful to her for providing me with much of the information on which this piece is based. The second model in each of these pictures, the paddler, varies. There were two families, friends of the artist and Violet Munnings, who lived at the opposite ends of Dedham. Their offspring, with another girl from close by, furnished the young men and women (including two pairs of brother and sister) as models in these paintings - when they were not enjoying jolly lunch parties at Castle House.

Undoubtedly there are more paintings of these scenes that may come to light. For those interested in the second series, there are examples and studies of the girl with the parasol at the Munnings Museum, Castle House, Dedham, Essex that is open to the public.

Society of Equestrian Artists Exhibition, Mall Galleries. Note 8

2008-07-17T14:18:00.000-07:00

It is some years since I last visited this annual exhibition. That currently (14 to 19 July, 2008) at the Mall Galleries, London SW1 is the 29th to be held by the Society of Equestrian Artists. For a time I sat on the selection committee, only because this allowed me a preview of the paintings and sculptures as they passed our raised or lowered hands enabling me to write a timely piece for the weekly magazine Horse and Hound. Apart from a few really good pictures by near 'professional' artists: Terrance Cuneo (for many years the Society's President); John King; Susie Whitcombe; Alison Guest; Malcolm Coward; Neil Cawthorne - in no particular order - the overall impression was not good and in some instances, ghastly. It was the last that drove away many good painters who did not want to be seen exhibiting in the same company. The sculptors were different. They were almost all female and were extremely good: Angela Connor; Gillian Parker; Judy Boyt; Tessa Pullen; Priscilla Hann among others, and quite marvellous wood carvings by Ann Baxter. This year Judy Boyt and Ann Baxter remain loyal to the Society, and the British Sporting Art Prize for the best sculpture was won by Mary Weatherby.

The standard this year was higher than I had seen previously, and only one or two painting horrors had crept through the selection. Here, in alphabetical order, like the Society's admirable catalogue, are my views on the 2008 pictures. Colin Allbrook showed three oils and two watercolours of which the landscape on canvas of Dartmoor Hunting was outstanding. Neil Cawthorne, as loyal as they come, was showing six oils paintings with much greater attention to weather and atmosphere than I remember: both Through the Mist and Homeward Bound were very fine. Robin Furness's The Warwickshire at Adminton, a gouache, while remeniscent of Lionel Edwards style, was very fine indeed with plenty of atmosphere. The colouring in Frederick Haycock's three hunting oils was refreshingly clean, and Neil McDonald's watercolour Two in Hand was neat and painterly. Roy Miller is among the professionals, but his bright and clear colours are not to my taste. However his snow scene, Racing Just Possible, was magnificent as the field disappeared in what was nearly a white-out. Barry Peckham is an old hand and his paintings of ponies, often in the New Forest, are consistently good; he is another artist who has stayed loyal to the Society over many years. The sharpness of the Scottish colouring of Peter Smith's racing pictures is almost too golden to be true and would benefit from toning down to a softer palette. Alison Wilson's Appleby Fair oils were particularly fine, particularly her Winter Afternoon study. There still seems to be group of painters of racing who feel the necessity to use heavy, strident colouring that simply does not work - all reality and no atmosphere. The avant-garde rarely comes off in this genre but Terence Gilbert's colourful Polo at Deauville and Vineta Sayer's swirls and twirls in Tally Ho were worth looking at.

The sculptures: wood, bronze, resin, soap-stone, wire, you name it, they were there, were disappointing, apart from Judy Boyt's Sebastian - Ready and Waiting, a shooting pony.

So, six years since my last visit, what was my impression? Certainly the large galleries were well filled with much worthwhile effort, but some of it contained too much effort and too little enjoyment. A few paintings one could well hang at home; but others would be uncomfortable anywhere. The general standard does seem to have improved - but I remeber writing that many yaers ago!

A John Charlton Sketch. Note 7.

2008-06-24T03:18:00.000-07:00

The other day there was an interesting story in the Daily Telegraph about the bed-ridden activity of a Cyril Fellowes, when aged 13. In 1902 he was laid up with a bad hip in a Harley Street clinic. To pass the time he wrote letters to a number of the "great and good" (the DT correspondent, Nick Britten's, term) requesting their autographs. Undaunted by rank or position and with the aid of addresses probably provided by his father, he wrote to such luminaries as Rudyard Kipling, Baden-Powell, W.G. Grace and Scott (embarking on Antartic fame). Perhaps less well known among Cyril's list was the sporting artist John Charlton (1849-1917). Charlton provided a lively sketch of a galloping horse's head (illustrated in the DT) above his full signature: he usually signed his drawings JC.

John Charlton was born at Bamburgh, Northumberland and while apprenticed to an iron-master, Sir Isaac Bell, he was also attending Newcastle Art School under the tuition of William Bell Scott. Coming to London he worked for a time at the South Kensington Museum, first exhibiting a painting of "Harrowing" at the Royal Academy in 1870. In 1899 he was commissioned by Queen Victoria to paint her arrival at St Paul's Cathedral for the Diamond Jubillee Service,(RA 1899). Charlton regularly exhibited animal paintings and portraits at the RA until 1904. He became a member of the Royal Society of British Artists and both the Royal Institutes of Painters in Watercolours and of Painters in Oil-Colours.

His often large scale equestrian portraits are an advance on the solemnity of Sir Francis Grant but fall short of the light and colour brio of a Sir Alfred Munnings' hunting group. Charlton's book illustrations of hunting are drawn with the knowledge of personal experience.

Many of his portraits were painted on commission and remain largely unseen in the houses of the descendants of his patrons. There are a few of his pictures in northern galleries: The Gray Art Gallery, Hartlepool (1); Laing AG, Newcastle (1); Shipley AG, Gateshead (2); and South Shields Museum (1). Once the home of the Morgan family (who became Viscounts Tredegar), Tredegar House, Newport, South Wales now belongs to Newport City Council, and here there are five paintings by Charlton. They include two hunting portraits (painted in 1884 and 1893); a portrait of the family's keeper, Hazell, and spaniels (1904); and a seated portrait of Godfrey Morgan (1831-1913) with his Skye terrier "Peeps". As a captian in the 17th Lancers Godfrey Morgan took part in the Charge of the Light Brigade in the Crimean War. Charlton also painted a retrospective picture of the 'Charge' in 1905 showing Morgan astride his horse "Sir Briggs": Both Peeps and Sir Briggs are buried in the garden of Tredegar House!

John Charlton returned north and died at Lanercost, Cumberland in November 1917.

In the DT sketch the horse's outstretched head and neck, all fire and vigour, can be identified by its bridle as being a military charger, (thank you, Sally Mitchell). Sadly, Cyril Fellowes died of blackwater fever in India, aged 25, four years before Charlton's death. His autograph book was sold at Hanson's Auctioneers, Etwall, Derbyshire on 19 June for a disappointing £440. The DT had mentioned an estimate of £5,000!.

George Morland's Pictures. Note 6

2008-06-08T03:46:00.000-07:00

There is a small shop in Shaftesbury that cannot be described as an Antique Shop - perhaps a collectors' shop (regimental badges, postcards, a few pieces of small china and silverware) are better words but, importantly, it has three large bookcases in it. There are shelves for local history, guides, sporting books illustrated by Lionel Edwards, and of many other subjects, as well as a shelf of Art books. The last category is limited, but I discovered a slender, cloth-bound octavo volume of "George Morland's Pictures" by Ralph Richardson (1897). For all I know, it may be found quite commonly, but I had not seen it before yesterday. Since neither I nor the owner of the shop had the right change, he kindly reduced the price by one third!

George Morland (1763-1804) was a wayward genius painting what we would describe today as 'rustic scenes': carthorses in barns, sheep sheltering beneath a hedge, pigs snugly in their styes, a winter pond, and shore-scapes with wreckers and smugglers; all beautifully painted and usually in quite small scale. He was not a sporting painter in the normal sense, but painted many hunting and shooting scenes, the latter being particularly charming. By the age of ten Morland was exhibiting at the Royal Academy. In a newspaper advertisemnt of a sale to be held by "Mr Greenwood, at his Rooms in Leicester Square, this day [18 February 1791] at 12 o'Clock. A small collection of Cabinet Pictures of the Foreign and English Schools, particularly the Chef D'Oeuvre of ..... ", Morland's name heads the distinguished list of artists. Elsewhere, in a similar advertisement, George Stubbs's name lies in fifth place behind Morland's second. He lived at a fast pace, initially invigorated and later incapacitated by drink. He was prolific, for the most part to keep his creditors at bay. While in a debtors' prison from 1800 until shortly before his death, he is said to have produced 192 pictures.

Within a few years of his death no less than four authors had written their biographies of his life: William Collins in 1805; F.W. Blagdon (1806); J. Hassell (1806); and the artist's friend George Dawe RA (1807). I once had Ralph Richardson's book titled: "George Morland, Painter, London" that was published in 1895. Like many reference books that one possesses I had not read it from cover to cover. In failing to do so I was not aware of the possibility of the publication of my Shaftesbury purchase. The Preface to the latter explains that Richardson had invited the owners of paintings and prints by Morland "to communicate to me the details of their collections." He was particulalry interested in discovering the original paintings for the many prints made after Morland's work, often engraved in mezzotint by the artist's brother-in-law, William Ward (who had married Morland's sister, and brother of James Ward RA whose sister was married to Morland!). The results of this request led to the publication of "George Morland's Pictures" two years later. This 'supplement' contains over 90 pages of details of individual paintings and similarly nine pages of prints - all with the owners' names and and addresses supplied!

Times have changed, but even now I hesitate to (re)publish some items from this burglars' directory of potential swag. Sir Walter Gilbey of Elsenham Hall, Essex was a well-know early collector of sporting and other paintings and he had 24 pictures by Morland. On the other hand, like many others named, G.A. Blackburn of Northgate, Halifax had a single "Winter Scene: oak tree; farmer; young man with hay under his arm going towards three sheep, 17 x 26 inches. Signed." Some entries have a note of provenance. Mrs E. Blathwayt of Huntspill Rectory, Bridgewater owned: "Morland's Last Sketch (that of a bank and a tree). Pencil. Morland's mother gave this sketch to the grandfather of Rev. Mr Blathwayt, Rector of Huntspill, Bridgewater who purchased from Morland 'The Rutland Fencibles'". The holdings by Public Galleries are included. The Corporation Galleries of Art, Glasgow had (and hopefully still have) four of Morland's paintings. Their Superintendant, James Paton, had a painting of "Gipsies. 19 x 24 inches, unsigned and undated, that was engraved by William Ward in 1792". The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and Asiatic Society, Calcutta each reported holding a single picture by Morland. A more tenuous note shows that while visiting Prince Hohenlohe at Castle Duino, near Trieste, Princess Mary of Thurn and Taxis in her "Travels in Unknown Austria (MacMillan, 1896) mentions: "There are two pictures here that I am convinced are by Morland". But she does not describe them.

For those searching for the provenance of a sporting picture this kind of listing of Morland's work (rarely seen for other artists) is of great interest, although by no means complete due to his immense output during his short life. As well as providing glimpses of contemporary collectors' enthusiasms, this book demonstrates Morland's standing at the turn of the eighteenth century and for many years afterwards, compared to that of, say, George Stubbs - a 'ranking' now reversed.

Christie's Sporting Art Sale. Note 5

2008-05-31T10:26:00.000-07:00

The first part of this Note refers back to Note 4 and the discussion of Lot 121 at Christie's London Sporting Art Sale held on Friday 23 May. Ben Herring's very smart painting of a tandem cocking cart on the road fetched an equally smart £82,100 (this includes the buyers premium)(estimate £40,000-£60,000). It was an exceptional painting for Ben Herring and while Sally Mitchell in her admirable Dictionary of British Equestrian Artists (published by the Antiques Collectors Club,1985; and surely ready for an update) writes that Ben's work was not of the same standard as that of his older brother, J.F. Herring Snr., in this case it came quite close. Certainly two people appreciated its quality and were prepared to go well above the estimate. The name of the 'whip' remains a mystery for the moment. The other pictures mentioned previously were the pair of Ascot paintings by Charles Cooper Henderson (Lot 59) which made a comparatively disappointing £42,500 (estimate £40,000-£60,000). The Alfred Munnings pictures had mixed fortunes with one of the hunting paintings failing to sell and the artist's study of Unsaddling at Epsom going for £300,500 which, without the buyer's premium, fell just below the lower estimate.

The evening before, the British Sporting Art Trust held a private view of the Sale combined with a reception and auction of promises. Over 200 members and their friends attended bidding for lots as diverse as a £2,500 voucher for a Stewart Parvin couture dress to two Members' Seats on the Centre Court at Wimbledon for this year's Men's Final. With such generous donors and enthusiastic buyers (and with previous donations) the 20 or so lots raised £30,000 for the Trust during an entertaining evening.

Christie's Sporting Art Sale 23 May 08. Note 4.

2008-05-20T11:47:00.000-07:00

Christie's London Sporting Art Sale on Friday 23 May contains many good sporting paintings. Munnings' is well represented with, among other pictures, one lovely Exmoor hunting scene, as is the recently fashionable John Emms. The latter's painting of hounds in kennel: Waiting for the Hunt is particulalry fine, although some of this artist's other efforts in the sale are less exciting. However, the reason for writing here is to explore a connection between two particular Lots. Lot 59 is a magnificent pair of paintings by Charles Cooper Henderson (1803-1877) of panoramic scenes: Going to Ascot Races and Returning from Ascot Races [1839] (Estimate £40,000-60,000). They were around 11 years ago and are now making a second appearance, but none the worse for that. In the 'coaching' world there is a feeling that due to their quality they should be purchased by a British gallery or museum. The second Lot is 121: A Tandem on the road to London, dated 1828, by Benjamin Herring Snr (1806-1830); the short-lived younger brother of the better known J.F. Herring Snr, also well represented in the sale.

As is now becoming apparent, Cooper Henderson's paintings of coaches and carriages often include portraits. In Returning from Ascot, the Earl of Chesterfield drives his own 'drag' and the artist stands in a landau in which are portrayed his parents, John and Georgiana Henderson, both artists in the own right. While Cooper Henderson was still an amateur he drew a very fine and amusing lithograph titled The Park, "T'was post meridian half past four". This large, rare print is a view of those congregating by the statue of Achilles near to today's Hyde Park Corner. It was published in 1827 or 1828. Among a number of portraits are those of Fitzroy Stanhope, Lord Algernon St Maur, Mr S.W. Fores, the print publisher, a Colonel Bridges, and the artist. This little group, including Henderson, were noted amateur carriage drivers and apparently assembled each afternoon during the season to pass comment on the vehicles that surrounded them; they later called themselves The Critics.

Herring's painting is an extremely polished picture of a type of tandem gig known as a cocking cart. The immaculate gentleman driver, usually named a Whip, controls a pair well-matched bay horses from his high seat, a groom behind him, set in an open road landscape. The provenance for this painting is that it came through a Colonel Bridges [1821-1897] to his son H.C.B.Bridges [1877-?1934], but the present vendor does not know the origin of the painting before that. The notes to the Lot include the remark that the assured young man driving the tandem "may be a member of the Bridges family, who had an estate at Highfield near Southampton." Although the crest painted on the side of the cocking cart and those embellishing the horses' harness are a little indistinct, they could well be the coronet and profile moor's head used by a widespread Bridges family. However, by the dates, Henderson's Colonel Bridges is plainly not the same person as the Colonel Bridges of Highfield (and also of Overton, Hants).

Another clue lies on the milestone in Herring's painting: "CXV miles from London." The 115 miles will not be as the crow flies, but a good idea of distances can be gleaned from Pattison's Roads. This volume, first published in 1828 and running to more than 18 editions, gives the distances to every town, village and turnpike gate out of London on the major coach roads. Southampton is 77 miles, and Overton much less! In fact this gazetteer provides more than 50 possible places where the picture might have been painted, presumably close to the subject portrait's home. The volume also names the more important houses and their owners near each coach stop or 'stage'. A George Bridges Esq lived at Astley Lodge, Tog Hill, near Bath (106miles from London), and there is a memorial in the church at Keynsham, Bristol (114 miles) to a Sir Thomas Bridges. For want of a better idea, my money therefore goes on a 'Somerset' Bridges who had himself portrayed on the London road by Benjamin Herring in his recently built and very smart gig, perhaps on his way to Hyde Park Corner?

London Original Print Fair. Note 3

2008-04-25T10:17:00.001-07:00

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.

The Bramshill Hunt. Note 2

2008-04-21T02:08:00.000-07:00

Many sporting pictures tell an obvious story. Others, of which portraits form the majority are seemingly bland records. However, there may be more than meets the eye in their painting. A picture of Sir John Cope's, or The Bramshill Hunt, is one in the latter category. It was painted (and copied) by Edmund Havell (1819-1898), a member of a large family of artists headed by the watercolourist William Havell (1782-1857). Edmund Havell painted the Bramshill Hunt for Sir John Cope in 1837 when the artist was just eighteen years old. A version of this scene is about 37 x 58 inches in size and shows two mounted huntsmen, a groom holding a third horse, and three top-hatted gentlemen in full hunting rig standing on the broad steps of the entrance to Bramshill house, Hampshire. The men are said to be Sir John Cope, Mr Thomas Peers Williams and Captain Edward Gordon RN. Thirteen hounds are portrayed, and like the humans, seem very posed and static. When the painting was sold in New York in 1986 it was given a provenance as being in Lord Brocket's sale in 1952. This was not so.

The Brockett painting is 86 x 110 inches, and is described in an 1883 inventory of pictures at Bramshill as the: "Meet of Sir John Cope's Hounds at Bramshill, with a view of the front of the house, and portraits of Sir John Cope Bart., T. Peers Williams Esq., Gerrard Blisson Wharton Esq., and (sitting in a chair) John Warde, of Squerries [Kent] Esq. The servants, horses and hounds are all portraits, 1837."

The composition in the centre of each painting is the same, but the larger picture has had canvas added above and to the left (another huntsman and seven more gambolling hounds), and to the right (the seated John Warde and one more lively hound). Captain Edward Gordon has been replaced by Gerrard Wharton.

I am very grateful to a family relation in Scotland who sent me a transcript of a letter written by Edmund Havell sixty years after painting this picture, sent to Sir Anthony Cope in 1897. This explains the differences between the two pictures described:

"He [Sir John Cope] requested me to paint a group of himself, some friends, and horses, and hounds, Huntsman, 'Whips', Studgroom, at the front door of that beautiful piece of Architecture. When the picture was finished he was incensed to find the top of the screen [of the facade of the doorway], and the three crowns thereon, were not introduced. Explanations were to no avail, nothing could do but that the screen and crowns be shown. So the only alternative was to enlarge the picture, originally it was about 40 x 50 inches. It was enlarged to its prsent size. The architecture added and also another friend introduced, a Mr James [sic] Ward (sitting in a chair in the foreground). The enlarging business was clumsily done, and I fear the 'join' shows in an unsightly manner. I think I dated the picture 1838 [in fact, 1837]. ........................................... When I painted the big picture I was an uneducated artist 18 years of age, and I know that the picture as a work of art, is only too dreadful."

I believe Havell must have painted the smaller picture (copying his original composition) for one of the three gentlemen standing on the steps - perhaps Captain Gordon or Gerrard Wharton. He also painted another view of the Bramshill Hunt, this time in the park with the house in the background. This painting was commissioned by Peers Williams, with Captain Gordon re-appearing in place of Wharton.

Some years ago I was given the opportunity to see the large picture, decribed by its owner as being in a sad state - as foreseen by Havell. Unfortunately I did not take up the offer then. Recently I bought a near contemporary pencilled 'key' for this painting. It is a copy, and the name of its author has been half-scrubbed off its back. Sadly I have now lost contact with the present owner of the large 'Bramshill Hunt', but would happily give my key for an opportunity to see the painting that has given me so much interest.

Sporting Art. Note 1

2008-04-17T08:12:00.000-07:00

This is the first of occasional Sporting Art Notes (Note 1) blog, and therefore experimental. Apart from what I have written in my profile, one of the purposes of future blogs is to keep in touch with anybody interested in sporting painting, prints or artists (mainly British). There will be questions, comments and the dissemination of unpublished material - and I hope some feedback. The final direction remains to be seen. A few with similar interests may recognize the writer, but I would prefer to keep it impersonal.

Have just attended a two-day meeting arranged by the British Sporting Art Trust near Matlock, Derbyshire. This was orientated towards carriage and coaches, their painters and drivers (whip, is the correct term, I am told). The first afternoon comprised four short talks on the artists James Pollard, Charles Cooper Henderson and Lynwood Palmer (th most prominent and successful of 'coaching artists'), and on the history of carriages and coaching in Ireland. There was also a short quiz on a number of coaching artifacts ranging from 18th C. bits and bridles to copper footwarmers: the winner scored 17 out of 20 which was good going. In the evening there was a dinner followed by an entertaining description of the work of the Royal Mews by the recently retired head coachman. The following day we visited the fascinating Red House Stables Carriage Museum at Darley Dale followed by a coach ride to Chatsworth. The weather was kind and the two days very enjoyable. For future sporting art visits cross-reference to the British Sporting Art Trust website.

I hope it will be possible to see the restored painting of what appeared to be a roan horse (perhaps that was just the stained varnish) by George Stubbs recently sold for a modest £44,000, due to its sad condition. Dated 1786, this was quite an early work. Given time, restorers can work wonders, but I hope it does not become too shining bright!