It was Sickert who encouraged Robert Bevan to paint the things that really interested him in the London he saw around him. This resulted in 1907 or 1908 in the first of a series of cab-yard pictures which he painted until 1912 when motorised cabs took over from horses. At about the same time he began to paint the London horse-sales. In a memoir of his father's life, R.A. Bevan recalls 'As children we were very conscious of the importance of the horse in our father's life. We were allowed to go with him when he was making drawings for cab-yard and horse-sale pictures. In earlier years he took us, of course, by horse-bus, and we sat on the front seats on top so that he could talk horses to the driver. At Tattersall's and Aldridge's, the Barbican and Ward's Repository there would always be a word or two with dealers and with handlers - and even with the bearded top-hatted auctioneer - who all seemed rather surprised that anyone should think that they were worth drawing'. The sales at the Barbican specialised in van-horses and hacks and a friend of Bevan's once remarked that 'it was the not very good horses that Bevan is so good at'

Similar Horse-sale pictures in public collections include 'Horse Sale at the Barbican', c.1913, the Tate Gallery, London; 'Showing at Tattersall's', c.1919, the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; 'Under the Hammer', 1913-14, the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, and 'Horse Dealers', 1918, the City Art Gallery, Manchester

(See R.A.Bevan, Robert Bevan 1865-1925 A Memoir by his Son, London, 1965, p.20)