Dogs at Stanstead Mountfitchet

With the demise of Bonhams’ specialist sale, first in London and then New York, there have been few auctions that have included a large chunk of art devoted to dogs. When they do happen, it is good for aficionados like myself to see and be able to write about.

One of these occasions happened recently in Stanstead Mountfitchet, near London, when auction house Sworders offered 93 lots in their “Sporting Art, Wildlife and Dogs” sale.

It may not have been Bonhams in the heyday of the genre, and there were no “stand out” pieces as in the “old days,” when one came to expect them, but there was good, honest, affordable dog art – collars, ephemera, bronzes and, of course, pictures.

Leading the lots in terms of value was a typical Heywood Hardy, “In the Rose Garden,” a young lady, her faithful dog by her side, carefully picking roses (est. £5,000-7,000). Hardy was followed by Maud Earl, a study of a black Chow Chow and Collie in an interior (£2,000-3,000). It was one of her more decorative pictures and lacked “breed appeal”; perhaps as a consequence it failed to sell, as did the Hardy. Nevertheless, the dog lots did well, with most selling, and at prices within estimates or above.

Among a mixed section of ephemera that included Austrian cold painted bronzes, spoons and a boot scraper in the shape of a Scottish Terrier was an unusual 19th-Century brass collar inscribed “Leveugle/Victor” and decorated with small Mastiff-type heads in five sections. It found a new home at £300.

Bronzes ranged from 19th-Century Animalier bronzes up to contemporary pieces. This section fared the least well, but one that did sell, albeit below estimate at £280, was a fine study of an Irish Wolfhound mounted on a marble base by the British postwar contemporary sculptor James Osborne. Two unusual French School unsigned 19th-Century models featuring Poodles in the lion trim, one in a playful crouching stance, the other scratching its ear and proudly showing his “bits,” were among the failures, even with a tempting estimate of £150-200 for the two.

William Ford was the leading miniaturist painter of dogs in the 19th Century whose enamels on copper usually set as brooches are always of the highest quality and in demand. The Bull Terrier with cropped ears offered by Sworders was a particularly fine, detailed example of his work and not surprisingly sold for nearly double the top estimate at £550.

One of the more unusual pictures was an Indian Company School gouache of a hound keeper with two hounds. Indian Company School circa 1770-1850 was a term for a hybrid Indian/European style of painting made in India by Indian artists, many of whom worked for European patrons living in India. Given its age and Indian School pictures appearing only rarely at auction, it generated a lot of interest, selling for £500 against its top estimate of £150.

For breed historians and researchers there were a number of pictures of no great artistic merit but of named dogs. The Boston Terrier Ch. Gaystock Lucky Lottie on Conrosa was painted by Marjorie Cox in 1966, the year she was Best of Breed at Crufts. The late Miss Cox was one of the most prolific artists, spending weeks away from home travelling from one commission to another. Her work rarely commands high prices, and this picture sold for just £90.

Mrs. Black was one of the earlier exhibitors of Border Terriers after they were given Challenge Certificates for the first time in 1920. From 1923 to 1926, dogs from her Tweedside kennel won six Crufts CCs, one of which was Ch. Tweedside Red Type. Reuben Ward Binks lived and worked in the English Lake District where Borders evolved, and his head study of Red Type sold just above estimate at £350.

Virtually all Henry Crowther’s output featured show dogs, and he developed two distinct styles: head studies or a dog in profile against an extensive background. His painting of the Wire Fox Terrier Keynsham Scoutmaster, with a lake and trees in the distance, is an example of the latter, and sold at top estimate for £300.

It was after World War II that the Doberman became established in Britain, and the early years from 1950 were dominated in the show ring by dogs from Mrs. Julia Curnow’s Tavey kennel. The painting by K.C. Brown (Mrs. Kathleen Morris, whose husband was successful in field-trial circles) features in show stance Ch. Precept of Tavey, who was Best of Breed at Crufts in 1955. Offered for sale with numerous prize cards and a Kennel Club-labelled box containing leads and nail clippers, the little collection sold for £300, the lower end of the estimate.

Sam Woodiwiss was one of the more prominent people in Britain in pedigree cats and dogs during the latter years of the 19th Century. As well as judging cats and dogs he also judged horses, cattle, pigs, goats and sheep. At his estate at Sedgemere he kept a number of different dog breeds – Greyhounds, Collies, Fox and Irish Terriers, and Old English Sheepdogs – but most of his successes came with Bulldogs. In 1895 he and his brother Edwin travelled to New York to exhibit at Westminster.

Following an article in “The Stockkeeper” on fighting dogs in the south of France, in the early 1890s he set off for France in search of specimens and returned with Dogues de Bordeaux. Things were looking well for the breed, which at that time was cropped, but when cropping was stopped all interest in the breed was lost, and it failed then to become stablished in Britain.

One of Woodiwiss’s successful Bulldogs was Ch. Blackberry, born in 1893, and Sworders offered a head study by army officer turned artist Alfred Wheeler. Guided at £100-200, it sold for £320.

In sales of this type there is always going to be crossover, with sporting pictures being included along with dogs. In this sale one that stands out is contemporary artist Frederick J. Haycock’s study of a pack of Foxhounds coming down a wet road toward the viewer. Original works by contemporary published artists like Haycock often have a mixed reception on the secondary market, but this one fared well, selling mid-estimate at £1,600.