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HENRY JOHN STOCK (1853-1930)
Stock is one of those minor but highly individual artists who are among the glories of the English Romantic tradition. Born in Greek Street, Soho, in 1853, he went blind in childhood but recovered his sight on being sent to live at Beaulieu in the New Forest. He studied at the St. Martin's School of Art and the Royal Academy Schools, and is said to have been encouraged by the engraver W.J. Linton, who took him to Italy. (It seems unlikely that this was before 1866, when Linton settled in America, since Stock would only have been thirteen at the time. Perhaps the trip took place during one of Linton's subsequent visits to England). In 1874, the year he began to exhibit at the Royal Academy, he became a figure-draughtsman in a firm of stained-glass artists; which one is not recorded. He exhibited at the RA until 1910, but also supported the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours (member 1880) and the Royal Institute of Oil Painters (member 1881), as well as showing occasionally in the provinces and at venues such as the Dowdeswell Galleries and the Fine Art Society in London.
During his early career Stock supported himself by painting portraits, building up quite an impressive clientele among the aristocracy. His sitters included the sculptor Lord Ronald Gower, the younger son of the Duke of Sutherland, and other members of his family; the daughters of Viscount Harcourt (he had a notable line in 'daughters'); and a series of grandees in the costumes they had worn at the Devonshire House fancy dress ball of 1897 - Lady de Trafford, the Earl of Crewe, and Mrs Bischoffsheim, the subject of Millais' famous portrait of 1873 (Tate Gallery).
But Stock's main interest was always imaginative subjects. These covered a wide field. If many were inspired by the Bible or literature (works based on Dante, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Goethe, Browning, William Morris and Whitman are recorded), others were symbolist themes typical of the period. Death-of-Love Plant, exhibited at the RI in 1896, might have come from the brain of Redon, and a group of works with musical themes - A Musician's Reverie (1888; Harrow School), Listening to Brahms (RA 1901) and 'In the Night' - Schumann (three versions exhibited 1908-27) - recall well-known paintings of the early 1880s by Ensor and Fernand Khnopff.
Stock's visual sources were equally diverse. There are passages in his work which suggest that he looked at the Pre-Raphaelites and C.H. Shannon. At least an interest in Rembrandt is betrayed by an uncharacteristic subject, Rembrandt painting Saskia, which he showed at the RI in 1919. But the great influences on him were Blake and G.F. Watts. With Blake he may have felt some sense of personal identity, perhaps related to the fact that, like the great visionary, he was born in Soho. In 1909 he was to leave London and settle at Felpham, near Bognor, on the Sussex coast; and while a move to the country may have been dictated by the need to live more cheaply to enable him to concentrate on subject pictures (portraits almost disappear from his exhibited works about this time), his choice of Felpham was surely inspired by the knowledge that Blake had lived there under the patronage of William Hayley during the years 1800-1803. Certainly the impact of Blake on his work is marked, not so much in terms of style as in his choice of subjects. Notable examples are two paintings of Good and Evil Spirits fighting for Man's Soul (RA 1879 and 1882), Elohim (private collection), a watercolour of 1904 which was included in the Last Romantics exhibition at the Barbican in 1989 (no.120; repr. in cat.), Job's Vision (RI 1909), and the series of illustrations to the Book of Revelation and Dante's Inferno offered for sale here (lots 57-65).
The influence of Watts may also have had some personal basis. There is no known evidence that they met, but it is quite possible that Stock encountered the older artist as a teacher in the Royal Academy Schools. (Watts was elected RA in 1867, a few years before the period when Stock would have been a student.) Stock's range of subject matter was very similar to Watts's, extending from (money-making) protraiture to literary and symbolist themes, with a few imaginative genre scenes and landscapes bridging the gap. If some of Stock's titles are Blakean, others are distinctly Wattsian; for instance, Death and Pleasure (RA 1881), Life's Immensity (RA 1900), Man and the Infinite (RA 1908) and Joy born of Sorrow (three versions RI 1924-29). Indeed Watts's cosmic vision and Blake's 'sublime' imagery were closely complementary in this context, and can often be seen working together. Elohim may take its title from Blake but the concept echoes Watts's Sower of the Systems (Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto), a visionary account of an almighty power scattering the stars and planets which was exhibited at the New Gallery in 1903, a year before Stock painted his picture. Nonetheless there are significant differences in the influence of Stock's two mentors. Stock displays an academic sense of form which owes more to Watts than to Blake. At the same time, while often attempting Wattsian effects of broken irridescent colour, he veers towards the Blakean techique of watercolour rather than Watts's preferred medium of oil.
Today Stock's work is comparatively uncommon, and nothing like this group of works has ever been seen on the market. Lot 56-65 are highly characteristic in their powerful and sometimes bizarre imaginative subjects. Together with lot 66, they come from the collection of Francis P. Osmaston (1857-1925), who was an interesting figure himself. A man of means who 'helped many struggling painters of his day', he was also an accomplished musician and a prolific author, publishing several volumes of poetry, a play about Cromwell, a translation of Hegel's Philosophy of Fine Art, and two books on Tintoretto. The second (1910) was printed by James Guthrie at his Pear Tree Press at Flansham, Bognor, who may well have been a friend of Stock. Stock painted portraits of Osmaston himself (RI 1903), his wife and daughter, Dorothy, who was to marry the distinguished economist Walter Layton. His biography of her contains information about her father, and actually refers to the present series of pictures: 'for many years the walls of our homes carried the works of Ricketts and Shannon as well as a series of illustrations from the Book of Revelations which Mr Osmaston had commissioned from one of his protégés' (see Lord Layton, Dorothy, 1961, ch.2 and p.73).
Lot 68 comes from a different collection, but was also bought direct from the artist by a relation of the vendor. A Wattsian genre scene, it is one of Stock's rare oil paintings, and, by an astonishing coincidence, appears here with a related pencil drawing (lot 66).
Henry John Stock (1853-1930)
Pain bringing Wings to a Soul
signed and dated 'H.J.STOCK 1900'; pencil and watercolour heightened with gum arabic
14 1/8 x 9¼in. (359 x 235mm.)
