BE 330
ARTHUR JOHN ELSLEY
1861 - London - 1952
A dead heat
Signed and dated 1893
Canvas: 38 ¼ x 25 ½ in / 97.2 x 64.8 cm
Framed: 48.9 x 36 x 3.7 in / 124.2 x 91.5 x 9.5 cm
Exhibited:
London, Royal Academy, 1893, no. 516
London, Richard Green, Nineteenth Century Paintings, 2008, no. 29, pp. 78-81, illustrated in colour
Literature:
Terry Parker, Golden Hours, The Paintings of Arthur J. Elsley 1860-1952, Richard Denis, 1998, pp. 21-22, illustrated p. 12
Arthur J. Elsley painted A dead heat at 7 North Bank, St. John’s Wood, near Lord’s cricket ground in a studio he shared with Fred Morgan (1847-1927). Elsley had taken the opportunity to share a studio and perfect his art under the guidance of Morgan. This was mutually advantageous as Elsley excelled at equine and canine portraits which he contributed to Morgan’s works, while Morgan shared his years of experience of human portraiture, especially of children.
We are fortunate that Elsley was keen to explain his work and this painting is very well documented.
“This artist thinks dogs are even more interesting sitters than children; they are so full of character. Puppies and kittens are, of course, like children - very difficult to deal with. They are either very fidgety or very somnolent. The pups in the picture were induced to scramble up the stairs - built up in the studio - by the attraction of a piece of meat at the top. Mr. Elsley received his early art training at South Kensington, passing into the Royal Academy schools in 1879.” ‘Pictures of English Child-Life’, Anon, Cassell’s Family Magazine, p. 468.
“Perhaps, of all Mr. Elsley’s works, A dead heat was the most tiring and troublesome to paint. The reason was the difficulty in the getting the puppies to stand in the position he wanted. As a preliminary, the stairs were made and taken to the studio. With a piece of meat in his hand, Mr. Elsley would endeavour to entice the puppies to the top; and he would study the various positions in which they scrambled up until he had discovered those which suited his purpose best. Having determined the positions, the difficulty was to get the animals to keep them. Of course, only one dog could be painted at a time, so the difficulty of the problem was reduced, at all events, to a certain extent. In the earlier stages of the proceedings, however, there was an unexpected difficulty. The puppy would not remain on the steps unless it was supported or held there; and Mr. Elsley found that as soon as he turned his back to go to the easel the little animal would scamper down the steps. When Mr. Elsley attempted to catch it, it would run off round the studio, evidently thinking he was playing a game with it. The humour of this, however amusing to the dog, got monotonous and fatiguing to the painter, to say nothing of the way in which it interfered with the progress of the picture.
How to keep the dog quiet and not have to chase it every five minutes was the problem. It was solved by the aid of a leather bag. Mr. Elsley put the dog as nearly as possible in the position in which he wanted it, watched it carefully until he could remember no more, then picked it up, popped it into the bag, went back to the easel, and painted until he had finished all he had seen. Then he would open the bag, put the dog back into position, watch it a little more, and repeat the operation. After this had gone on a few times the little beast used to improve the period of rest by calmly going to sleep in the bag. The feet and legs of all the dogs were painted from the same animal. In time it became so trained in the process that it would actually go to sleep in the position in which Mr Elsley placed it, and so became and ideal sitter.” (‘The Children’s Season’ by Rudolph De Cordova, The London Magazine, December 1904, pp. 629-30).
The same child model also appears in some of Morgan’s works of this date.
A black and white photo of this painting appears in Royal Academy Notes, 1893, p. 100, opposite Fred Morgan’s Roses and Thorns, (no 526), both works copyright Berlin Photographic. A representative from the print company would have visited their studio prior to ‘sending in’ to the RA and chose both works to reproduce. This was Elsley’s first work to be published by Berlin Photographic and marked the start of a long association which lasted until the Great War.
The sale of and reproduction royalties from this work brought enough money for the artist to marry, and on 11th November 1893 he married Emily Fusedale at St. Thomas Parish Church, Portman Square, Marylebone.
It was popular for well-known paintings to be parodied in cartoons and such was the fame of Elsley’s painting that it was twice used in political cartoons. First by Joseph Morwood Staniforth in The Western Mail, 10th June 1893, in which the three contestants for the Liberal leadership are shown climbing the stairs with Gladstone ‘Coaxing Them Up’. Soon afterwards J.A.S. – James Affleck Shepherd - drew ‘Which Wins?’ with the contestants’ faces superimposed on the puppies, from left to right they were Lord Rosebery, Sir William Harcourt and Earl Spencer.
Berlin Photographic Company produced a very popular print of the painting and gave permission to reproduce it in a wide variety of magazines in the UK, USA, and throughout Europe including a large double page engraving in The Graphic magazine in 1900.
We are grateful to Terry Parker, the author of ‘Golden Hours, The Paintings of Arthur J. Elsley 1860-1952’, for his assistance with the cataloguing of this work.
The Western Mail, 10th June 1893 (taken from Terry Parker,
Golden Hours, The Paintings of Arthur J. Elsley 1860-1952,
Richard Denis, 1998, with agreement of the author)
ARTHUR JOHN ELSLEY
1861 - London - 1952
Arthur Elsley was a painter of domestic genre subjects and portraits, especially of children. His parents are known to have been John Elsley, a coachman and Emily Freer, residents of Curzon Street, Soho in London. The couple had six children, three girls and two boys. Arthur was the fifth child. He became a probationer at the Royal Academy Schools in 1876 and he studied there until 1882 under Frederick Pickersgill (1820-1900, Keeper of the Royal Academy between 1873 and 1887), Edward Armitage (1817-1896, Professor of Painting 1875-1882), John Marshall (d.1896, Professor of Anatomy), and Henry Bowler (1824-1903, Professor of Perspective between 1861 and 1890). Elsley exhibited his first painting, Portrait of an Old Pony, at the Royal Academy in 1878.
Elsley lived most of his life in London, first in Angel Court, then in Gloucester Road and later in ‘the highly respectable artistic colony at St John’s Wood.’ He had many close friendships with other artists, such as Solomon Joseph Solomon (1860-1927) and even shared a studio with George Grenville Manton (1855-1932). Elsley was a keen cyclist and had taken a cycling trip through Belgium and Northern France with Manton in their student days. Manton also introduced Elsley to Frederick Morgan (1847-1927) and when Manton left the studio in 1889, Elsley moved into Morgan’s studio in St John’s Wood.
Elsley’s paintings, which he continued to exhibit at the Royal Academy until 1917, testify to his fondness for children, in particular his own daughter Marjorie who was often the model for many of his works. His preferred themes of sentimental narratives are often placed in rustic settings, suggesting that he was well acquainted with the countryside. His young, pretty children are often depicted playing amongst themselves, or with their pets. I’se biggest, which shows a small girl standing on a book, measuring herself against an enormous St Bernard Dog, was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1892, and won him considerable public acclaim. Elsley occasionally deviated from his pet and childhood themes, producing such works as Suprised! of 1904 which shows a lady on her horse out hunting, leaping over a monastery wall and scattering monks in all directions. Elsley often collaborated with Morgan with whom he shared a studio near Lord’s Cricket Ground at Northbank. He typically painted animals in these joint compositions.
Elsley married his second cousin Emily Fusedale in November 1893. She was the eldest of three sisters and ten years younger than Arthur. They had one daughter Marjorie who was born in 1903. With the outbreak of the Great War, Elsley joined a munitions factory where myopia was a virtue rather than a disability. After a delightful holiday in Tunbridge Wells in 1928, Elsley purchased a huge Victorian house there, 28 Madeira Park. Having been forced by his failing sight to abandon painting, he happily continuing with his woodwork and gardening until his death at the age of 91.
Elsley’s paintings were often engraved or used for advertisements, greatly enhancing his popularity and making him a household name. His idyllic images of childhood became the icons of the Edwardian Era.