Gee-up

Born in 1860, the son of a coachman, Arthur John Elsley joined the South Kensington School of Art at the age of fourteen. He submitted his first exhibit to the Royal Academy in 1878 and continued to paint thereafter until 1917. Elsley was among the most beloved and commercially sought after artists of late Victorian England. His idealised depictions of the lives of children and animals appealed to the middle and upper classes of society, and his work also gained popularity through chromolithographic reproductions. Reproduction rights to Elsley’s work were so eagerly sought after that print companies often competed to buy the copyright to his paintings. His paintings were routinely reproduced for use in colour calendars published by the American firm Thomas D. Murphy Company, soap advertisers, as well as for the cover of publications such as Bibby's Quarterly.
In Gee Up, Elsley depicts four young children playing at home, with the smallest child riding on the back of her older brother. Another child has fashioned makeshift reigns, mischievously encouraging her brother to make haste. The dog was used by Elsely as a model for two further works, Here They Are, and Goodnight. Terry Parker notes that it ‘arrived at his studio with its hair tied in tapes which Emm had to undo before Elsley could paint it’ (T. Parker, op.cit., p. 125). The green dress with the trim of roses worn by the girl on the left belonged to Marjorie, Elsley's only child, born in 1903, who modelled for many of his most celebrated paintings. However, only her dress appears here and Marjorie didn't model for any of the figures.