DeCoverly Art Collection

J.F. KERNAN, American, 1878-1958

Joseph Francis KERNAN, was a sportsman all of his life and the majority of his subjects featured, as he described it, “the human side of outdoor sports, hunting, fishing and dogs”. These were ideal subjects for magazine covers and his work appeared on all of the major – and some minor – magazines, including The Saturday Evening Post, Collier’s, Liberty, The Country Gentleman, Capper’s Farmer, The Elks, Outdoor Life, and the Associated Sunday Magazines. His work was also commissioned for calendars and advertisers such as Fisk Tires, International Harvester and Pratt & Lambert.

Kernan was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, and studied at the Eric Pape School of Art in Boston. This was financed by playing professional baseball. He also taught for two years at the Pape School before launching his own art career.

A lengthy career spanning four decades was due, in part, to his ability to adapt both subject matter and style to current trends. Dubbed as “the poor man’s Norman Rockwell,” J.F. Kernan contributed, along with many painters of the Golden Age of American Illustration, to the formation of a visual culture with which all classes could identify.

Gustav MUSS-ARNOLT, American, 1858-1927

Muss-Arnolt was one of a small group of American painters, among them Percival Rosseau and Edmund Osthaus, who specialized in the depiction of sporting dogs.

He lived and worked in New York City and Tuckahoe, New York for most of his life. In the early 1890s he wrote and illustrated several articles for Harper’s Weekly and between May of 1895 and December of 1909 he did over 170 illustrations for The American Kennel Club Gazette. Between 1880 and 1894, Muss-Arnolt was a frequent contributor to the National Academy of Design annual exhibitions.

Little is known about his life, though it is known he was involved with conformation dogs as well as field trial dogs. He was on the board of directors of The American Kennel Club between 1906 and 1909.

Edmund Henry OSTHAUS, German-American, 1858-1928

Born in Hildesheim, Germany, Osthaus studied at the Royal Academy of Arts in Dusseldorf between 1874 and 1882, immigrating to the United States in 1883. He was the director of the Toledo Academy of Fine Arts between 1886 and 1893, when he left to devote himself full-time to painting, shooting and following field trials. He was a charter member of the National Field Trial Association formed at Newton, North Carolina, in November 1895.

Working in both watercolor and oils, Osthaus’s portrayal of sporting dogs became well known.

   
   

Percival Leonard ROSSEAU, American, 1859-1937

Born about thirty miles north of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Rosseau’s early adulthood was spent in developing a business which provided him with a financial base. Once established, he enrolled at the Academie Julien in Paris where he stayed for three years.

Influenced by friends who painted in the tradition of the Barbizon School, he exhibited a painting of Setters at the Salon of 1904. From that point on he devoted himself entirely to the painting of dogs, including a picture of a panther hunt which was awarded a Gold Medal at the Salon of 1906.

Rosseau’s best pictures exhibit a loose painting style which captured the tense action of the sporting dogs which he painted. More than his contemporaries Muss-Arnolt and Edmund Osthaus, he was very concerned about the quality of light in a painting, and many are enhanced by the subtle depiction of its changing qualities.

William Arnold WOODHOUSE, English, 1857-1935

A Lancashire artist born near Morecambe, Woodhouse rarely left the area where he was born. He developed a soft realistic style which was well suited to the depiction of animals. He contributed many works to the Lancashire Art Exhibitions, and entered two at the R.A.

Abraham COOPER, R.A., English, 1787-1868

One of the best known of English sporting artists from the first half of the nineteenth century, Abraham Cooper was largely self-taught. He received encouragement and a number of lessons from the well-known sporting artist, Benjamin Marshall.

Cooper was predominantly a painter of horses but executed several dog portraits. His work is characterized by a high finish and rich, naturalistic colouring, as well as a strict attention to anatomy. Several important artists studied under him, including John Frederick Herring and William Barraud. He was elected to the R.A. in 1817, becoming known as "Horse" Cooper. He exhibited 332 paintings there between 1812 and 1869.

 
George EARL, English, fl. 1824-1908

The father of the better known animal artist, Maud Earl, George Earl was an active sportsman who excelled in the depiction of dogs. Little is known of his background and training or his early work.

Earl exhibited nineteen paintings at the R.A. between 1857 and 1882, although only two were of dogs (a Maltese and an Old English Mastiff). He is remembered primarily as a sporting dog painter. His most important work was undoubtedly The Field Trial Meeting which depicted a mythical field trial in Bala, North Wales, in which almost all the important field trial personalities of the day were depicted with their dogs. Another important project for which he is often remembered was an important series of portrait head studies of dogs. This series, entitled Champion Dogs of England, was painted in the 1870s and is illustrated in a now rare volume of the same name.

Maud EARL, English, 1864-1943

Perhaps more than any artist born in the nineteenth century, Maud Earl is associated with the painting of pure-bred dogs. Born into an artistic family – her father was the well-known animal artist, George Earl, and her uncle, Thomas Earl, painted horses and other animals – Maud was taught by her father and quickly developed her natural talent for capturing the true character of her canine subjects.

Maud Earl exhibited regularly in England and Europe. She was a prolific and much sought after artist who painted many of the important dogs of her day, including those belonging to famous dog fanciers such as Edward VII and the Duchess of Newcastle. By 1916, she had received international recognition, with several solo exhibitions, and her work was widely reproduced, both in books and in print form.

Her oeuvre may be loosely divided into four styles: the naturalistic, richly painted portraits of dogs from around 1880 to 1900; a looser, more sketchy style from about 1900 to 1915; what she referred to as her oriental style from about 1916 into the 1920s after she emigrated to New York; and her late, rather stylized portraits of dogs painted during the 1930s in America. It was during her early years in America when she painted her little known but elegant paintings of birds which she considered some of her best work.

Arthur WARDLE, R.I., R.B.C., P.S., English, 1864-1949

Wardle is best known for his paintings of dogs, and in particular, Terriers, but throughout his life he painted a great variety of wild and domestic animals. He evidently had very little formal training, but he studied live animals at the London Zoo and became an animal artist of considerable talent.He was equally proficient in oils, watercolor and pastel, and became Member P.S. 1911 and R.I. 1922. He exhibited at the R.A. from 1880 to 1938, showing some 113 works.

Edwin MEGARGEE, American, 1883-1958

Born in Philadelphia, the son of a well-known lawyer and sportsman, Megargee studied at Drexel Institute in Philadelphia and the Art Student League in New York.

Although Megargee painted animals of all kinds – dogs, horses and cattle – he is best known for his many depictions of pure-bred dogs. An active American Kennel Club judge, he painted many portrait commissions.

Because of his active involvement in pure-bred dogs, almost his entire output of dog paintings falls into the pure-bred dog portrait category. Most were portrait commissions.

Thomas BLINKS, English 1853-1910

Blinks is among the best known and most highly regarded of those who painted sporting dogs in the late nineteenth century. His paintings, executed in a highly finished style, often depict sporting dogs in the field, characteristically posed on point or, in the case of Foxhounds, running over fields and fences in pursuit of the fox.

Born in Mardston, his family soon moved to Ticehurst where the young Blinks went to school. He was sketching by the age of ten, and although he wanted to study art he was, as his father’s insistence, apprenticed to a tailor. Although he was to receive no formal training, his keen observation and natural talent soon had him producing paintings of the sporting life with an almost photographic quality.

Blinks worked in both oil and watercolor, although he is certainly best remembered for his oil paintings. He first exhibited at the Dudley Gallery in 1881, and at the R.B.A. in 1882. He exhibited twenty-nine works at the R.A. from 1833 to 1910.