SP 4712
GEORGE ELGAR HICKS, RBA
Lymington 1824 - 1914 Odiham
Archery practice - Stringing
Signed and dated 1864
Canvas: 21 ¼ x 16 1/8 in / 54 x 41 cm
Framed: 27.8 x 22.8 x 2.3 in / 70.5 x 58 x 5.8 cm
Provenance:
Private collection, UK
Exhibited:
London, Richard Green, Nineteenth Century Paintings, 2008, no. 17, pp. 50-51, illustrated in colour
Like many Victorians, George Elgar Hicks was an enthusiastic admirer and practitioner of the fashionable sport of archery. As well as painting scenes of the sport, he was awarded an archery medal in 1865 by the Royal Toxophilite Society (see George Elgar Hicks: Painter of Victorian Life, exhibition catalogue, Geffrye Museum, London, 1983, no.8, p.18). In 1863 Hicks sold three archery studies, entitled Stringing, Nocking and Loosing to the dealer H. Wallis, which were engraved by W. H. Simmons. Wallis liked the paintings so much he ordered a second, slightly smaller, set the following year.
Probably the best known picture to record the fashion for archery was English Archers, Nineteenth Century or The Fair Toxophilites, 1872, by William Powell Frith, (Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter) exhibited at the RA in 1873. Intended as an accurate record of the appearance of lady archers in the nineteenth century, Frith depicted his daughters Alice, Fanny and Louise as models. Although Hicks’ painting preceded Frith’s by a decade, there are similarities in the ladies costumes, specifically the archery belt from which hangs a quiver, a large, wool tassel for cleaning arrows, and an ornamental acorn.
The topical subject was also addressed in literature of the time, such as George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda, 1876, whose heroine Gwendolen Harleth is a skilled archer. In Daniel Deronda, the eligible Mr Grandcourt sees Gwendolen for the first time at an Archery Meeting at the aptly titled Arrowpoints estate at Quetcham, during which the author expounds, ‘Who can deny that bows and arrows are among the prettiest weapons in the world for feminine forms to play with? They prompt attitudes full of grace and power, where that fine concentration of energy seen in all marksmanship, is freed from associations of bloodshed’ (George Elliot, Daniel Deronda, Everyman’s Library, 1999, p.109).
GEORGE ELGAR HICKS, RBA
Lymington 1824 - 1914 Odiham
George Elgar Hicks painted a variety of subjects including religious scenes, landscapes and his preferred form of genre scenes. His most famous works were his extraordinarily detailed portrayals of Victorian life which are reminiscent of the great Victorian novelists Charles Dickens and George Augustus Sala in their narrative intensity and documentary power. Perhaps the best known of these images are General Post Office, one minute to six, Billingsgate Fish Market, Woman's Mission, Changing Homes and Before the magistrates. Late in life Hicks developed his skill as a portraitist.
The Athenaeum commented upon the significance Hicks’s views of Victorian life would hold for future generations: ‘Mr G E Hicks hit upon a good idea when he resolved to paint for us the scenes which take place at some of the well-known places of business of the City of London...Such pictures, even less well painted than these really are, will be interesting for the future time, and therefore we shall be thankful to get them as creditably executed as [those of Hicks are.]’
Hicks studied for a medical degree at University College, London, before becoming an artist. He studied at Sass’s Academy and the Royal Academy Schools, which he entered in 1844. He won a Silver medal for his studies from the Antique. He exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy from 1848, though many of his works reached their greatest fame through their exhibition at private gallerys which gained enormous prestige in the mid-nineteenth century art world, in particular Henry Wallis’ French Gallery. The vast dissemination of these compelling images in the form of prints engraved for the print dealer Louis Victor Flatow, ensured the enormous and enduring popularity of the artist.
He married Maria Harriss in 1847 and the marriage produced six children, Georgina, Edward, Frederick, Mary, Rosa Gordon and Annie. Several of these children died in childhood and Hicks lost his wife Maria in 1880. He remarried in 1884 to Anne Ross. He lived most of his life in London and Hampshire.
The work of George Elgar Hicks is represented in the Manchester City Art Gallery, the Geffrye Museum, the Museum of London and Tate Britain, London.