Lot Essay
The present picture is a smaller version of Horsley's Diploma Work, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1866, no. 502. It depicts the inglenook of the Dining Room at Willesley, near Cranbrook in Kent, built between 1864 and 1870 for the artist by Richard Norman Shaw. Willesley was Shaw's first important domestic commission, and was amongst the first of many Arts and Crafts interiors to include an inglenook (perhaps being only preceded by W.E. Nesfield's design, now destroyed, at Farnham Royal in Buckinghamshire). A full description of the house can be found in Country Life, 30 August 1973.
J.C. Horsley, a nephew of the painter, Sir Augustus Wall Callcott, the Keeper of the Royal Collection, was the most prosperous and successful of the group that came to be known as the Cranbrook Colony, which included Frederick Daniel Hardy, his cousin Thomas Webster, George Bernard O'Neill, and Augustus E. Mulready. Having started his career painting historical pictures, during the 1850s and 60s Horsley painted contemporary subjects, often of couples flirting in the countryside. From 1875 to 1890 he was Rector of the Royal Academy where his prudish objection to the study of the nude earned him the nickname 'Clothes-Horse Horsley'. He did, however, contribute many illustrations to Punch. His brother-in-law and close friend was the engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel.
Sir Edward Jodrell, an early owner of this canvas, was a Norfolk landowner.
J.C. Horsley, a nephew of the painter, Sir Augustus Wall Callcott, the Keeper of the Royal Collection, was the most prosperous and successful of the group that came to be known as the Cranbrook Colony, which included Frederick Daniel Hardy, his cousin Thomas Webster, George Bernard O'Neill, and Augustus E. Mulready. Having started his career painting historical pictures, during the 1850s and 60s Horsley painted contemporary subjects, often of couples flirting in the countryside. From 1875 to 1890 he was Rector of the Royal Academy where his prudish objection to the study of the nude earned him the nickname 'Clothes-Horse Horsley'. He did, however, contribute many illustrations to Punch. His brother-in-law and close friend was the engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel.
Sir Edward Jodrell, an early owner of this canvas, was a Norfolk landowner.