Arthur John Elsley

By the turn of the century in England, the popularity of the dog as a domestic pet reached unprecedented heights. Promoted by Queen Victoria and the British nobility, the general population came into contact with pure-bred dogs, making it socially de rigeur to be accompanied by a highly bred canine. During this time, some of the most popular and prolific art was created in the area of sporting paintings and animal portraiture.

The depiction of various breeds of dogs was a frequent subject in Arthur Elsley's work throughout his career. Having been inspired by two centuries of sporting art, beginning with Francis Barlow in the 17th century and culminating with the canine subjects of George Stubbs. Elsley perfectly integrated the most popular breeds of his day-hounds, St. Bernard's, terriers, and collies-into charming genre paintings.

This recently discovered painting is arguably one of Elsley’s most accomplished and successful works. He expertly unifies two of his favorite subjects, the hound and the child, into a brilliantly dynamic and colorful composition. Elsley painted numerous works revolving around the hunt throughout his career, beginning with Portrait of an Old Pony, which was his first Royal Academy submission in 1878.

In the present composition, the foxhounds charge energetically into the foreground hearkening the call of the young girl’s horn. Although children figure prominently in Elsley’s oeuvre, the hounds and the girl are equal protagonists of this story. Following the death of Charles Burton Barber in 1894, the same year this work was completed, Elsley was recognized as the foremost painter of animals in England. As the critic for Pearson’s Magazine exclaimed in a review of Elsley’ work in 1898, Mr. Elsley possesses the happy knack of being able to give as much interest and expression to the face and pose of a dog or cat as he does to the human performers in his little comedies.

Entitled alternatively A False Start/Christmas Morning, this popular image was illustrated in Harmsworth Magazine in 1900 as well as adorned the American color calendar produced by Thos. D. Murphy Co., in 1904. Prints of Elsley's paintings, reproduced as lithographs, calendars, postcards, magazines, book illustrations and advertisements, were immensely popular during the artist's lifetime, often having runs of up to half a million. Images of Elsley's paintings were, as Terry Parker wrote, ``more familiar to the average late-Victorian and Edwardian family than any other painter's work of the period'' (Parker, p. 6).