On 28th June, Cheffins Fine Art Auctioneers in Cambridge will sell two paintings of local scenes near Dunmow, Essex, by one of Britain’s most celebrated sporting artists, Lionel Edwards.
The two gouache works include a hunting scene of The Essex Hunt, dated 1928, and a preparatory study for the landscape view. These pictures were commissioned by poet and war veteran, Captain John (Jack) Newman Gilbey, lifetime friend of the artist and part of the family who founded the Gilbey’s Gin Distillery.
Captain Jack was the great-nephew of the famous Sir Walter Gilbey, 1st Baronet, who founded, along with Albert Gilbey, W and A Gilbey, one of the most successful wine and spirits merchants businesses which thrived during the latter part of the 19th century and was said to have been the business which brought wine to the masses, offering it for sale by the bottle for the first time. As this business grew, it expanded to create its own gin distillery, Gilbey’s Gin, which grew to over ten different gin distilleries the world over. A local family, the Gilbey’s were from Mark Hall in Latton, near Harlow.
Created in March and April 1928 from near Colville Hall in Essex, the paintings depict The Essex Hunt with White Roding village church in the background. These two works are now being sold by Captain Jack Newman Gilbey’s great-nephew.
An account of the pictures was written by the Country Life correspondent, JNP Watson, and published in Lionel Edwards: Master of the Sporting Scene, 1986. It says, ‘LE’s (Lionel Edwards), friend Captain Jack Gilbey, who prized the largest collection of the artist’s work, enjoyed the privilege of choosing the background for his picture of the Essex hounds and of watching LE paint the scene, in front of White Roding.’ The account also includes Captain Jack Gilbey’s entry into Country Life magazine in 1950, when he describes watching Lionel Edwards paint. It reads, ‘With his usual thoroughness Lionel went out for the day with the hunt in order to take stock of the huntsman, his horse and the pack. In the meantime, he had asked me to suggest a typical Essex setting, and I thought I could not do better than choose the distant view of the village of White Roding, with undulating ploughland in the foreground and middle distance, which had been familiar to me from boyhood.’
Patricia Cross, Associate at Cheffins comments:
“Lionel Edwards is undoubtedly the master of the hunting scene. These paintings show his extraordinary eye for detail in depicting local landscape and remarkable talent in painting animals so precisely that they looked recognisable. The pictures are fresh-to-the market, having remained in the Gilbey family since they were commissioned from the artist in 1928 by one of his closest friends and patrons, Jack Gilbey, who had amassed a large collection of Edwards’s works and was even gifted Edwards’s earliest hunting drawing painted aged only five years old. This is a unique opportunity to acquire pictures which not only come from one the greatest and largest early collections of Edwards’ work, but also come with a rare and fascinating account of being painted right in front of the patron, Jack Gilbey, as he stood out in a field on a cold day in March 1928, watching Edwards work whilst smoking incessantly. Bearing in mind the success of the previous Lionel Edwards which was sold at Cheffins, I would expect them to draw much interest from both collectors and the trade.”
In September 2022, Cheffins sold a large painting by Lionel Edwards of the Devon and Somerset Stag Hounds which achieved £24,000, against a presale estimate of £12,000 - £18,000.
The picture titled ‘The Essex’ which is signed and dated has a presale estimate of £4,000 - £6,000. The landscape view and preparatory study has an estimate of £2,000 - £3,000.
To view the catalogue for the Fine Sale, please click here
For further information, contact Cheffins Fine Art on 01223 213343 or fine.art@cheffins.co.uk