Arthur John Elsley

Martin Ham, Powick;
Sotheby's, Chester, 14 April 1988, lot 3233;
Private collection

Terry Parker, Golden Hours: The Paintings of Arthur J. Elsley 1860-1952, 1998, illus. p. 116

STRUCTURE Original canvas. The paint surface appears to be in good condition; clean and ready to hang. ULTRAVIOLET LIGHT UV light reveals no sign of retouching, good original condition throughout. FRAME Held in an ornate, plaster gilt frame in fair condition. For more information regarding this picture please contact the Victorian & Edwardian Pictures Department on +44 (0)207 293 5718
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Arthur John Elsley was born at Derby Street in London's Mayfair on 20 November 1860. His father, John Elsley was a coachman and amateur artist and therefore the young boy was brought up appreciating art and with a genuine affection for animals. His father was sufficiently talented to have a painting A Group of Horses, exhibited at the British Institution in 1845. John Elsley was forced to give up his work as a coachman following an illness in the early 1870s and worked as a resident caretaker at a firm of stockbrokers close to the Bank of England. It was around this time that Arthur John painted his earliest known picture of a cairn terrier named Vic which shows an influence from the work of Edwin Landseer, the foremost animal painter of the nineteenth century. The artist was only eleven years old when Vic was painted but his father encouraged his efforts and allowed him to follow the precarious path of becoming an artist.

By 1874 the young Elsley had recognised the value of sketching animals from life at the Zoological Gardens as many artists had done before him. He filled his sketchbooks with drawings of the exotic animals in the collection and also made sketches of farm animals. It was thus that he produced a folio of work for submission to the entrance committee of the South Kensington School of Art when he was fourteen. His career was almost brought to a halt at this time when he contracted measles which almost blinded him; his eyesight was permanently damaged.

In the winter of 1876 Elsley was made a probationer at the Royal Academy Schools and was taught by tutors that included Frederick Pickersgill, Edward Armitage, Henry Bowler and John Marshall, presided over by Sir Francis Grant. In his first year at the schools Elsley painted a faithful copy of John Frederick Herring's Three Horses Watering which at that time hung at the National Gallery. His interest in horses was probably due to his father's earlier career and Elsley's first Royal Academy exhibit was another equestrian subject Portrait of an Old Pony of 1878. His proud father lived long enough to see this painting exhibited but died less than a month later leaving Elsley, the eldest son, head of the household.

Following his graduation in 1881 or 1882 Elsley found work painting portraits of dogs, children and horses and fortunately attracted the patronage of the Benett-Stanford family who lived near Brighton. Elsley had painted Mr Benett-Stanford's dog Jim in 1880 when he was still a student and in 1885 he painted Ellen Benett-Stanford on her Horse Congress and her husband Vere Benett-Stanford which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1886. In April 1885 Elsley's first published work was printed in Young England, a magazine for boys. The picture was a line engraving of two horses being led away from a storm entitled April Floods in the Eastern Counties. This heralded the start of commercial success for the sale of copyright of his exhibited paintings for illustrations in books and advertisements.  By 1887 Elsley was living in Kensington sharing a studio with the portrait painter George Greville Manton. It was Manton that introduced Elsley to Fred Morgan and in 1889 when Manton quit the studio, Elsley and Morgan took a studio together in St. John's Wood; Elsley continued to live at Angel Court in the City with his mother and siblings. Morgan's first marriage to the artist Alice Havers had broken down and they divorced but the time working with Elsley helped to strengthen both of their careers. Morgan found difficulty painting animals and therefore he and Elsley collaborated on pictures at that time, Morgan painting the figures and Elsley painting the dogs or horses.

At the Crystal Palace Exhibition of 1891 the large canvas The Baliff's [sic] Daughter of Islington won a silver medal for Elsley and a year later the publication of a print of I'se Biggest (Sotheby's, New York, 2 November 1999, lot 74) which was so popular that it had to be re-engraved. I'se Biggest demonstrates Elsley's ability to depict the innocence of childhood alongside their playful and loyal pets, with sentiment and not by resorting to an overt anthropomorphic portrayal of animals. The success of this painting and the publication of Grandfather's Pet in The Illustrated London News Christmas edition in the same year, made Elsley financially stable enough to marry Emily (Emm) Fusedale, his second cousin, in November 1893.

Following the death of Charles Burton Barber in 1894, Elsley became the foremost painter of animals and children and over the next two decades he painted many pictures that were highly popular when exhibited and even more popular when printed. Around 1900 Fred Morgan accused Elsley of using one of his ideas for a painting and unfortunately their friendship never recovered. Following their argument, Elsley began to paint pictures on a grander scale, often with many figures and animals. In 1903 Arthur and Emm's only child Marjorie was born and her father used her often as the model for his paintings. Fortunately she bore an 'uncanny resemblance to a model he had used a few years earlier who might have been the child of one of his siblings or, perhaps, one of Emm's sisters' (Terry Parker, Golden Hours: The Paintings of Arthur J. Elsley 1860-1952, 1998, p. 11).

Well on the Mend depicts a young convalescent propped-up by pillows in a wicker chair, being visited by her joyous child and a concerned and loyal collie. Her book has been thrown aside as the child presents a rose to her mother from the bunch of flowers on the table beside her. It was printed in colours as an advertising show-card for Wincarnis, a tonic wine made by Colman's.