Reminiscences of a Sporting Artist

Edwards, Lionel R.I.

Published by Putnam & Co., 1947

About this Item

Gift quality first edition hardcover in red cloth covered boards with sharp tips and bumped spine ends. Price-clipped dust wrapper is a professional reproduction that is otherwise complete and displays beautifully in new mylar. Tidy Xmas gift dedication on fep, along with the words 'Hawling House', Hawling House, Hawling, CHELTENHAM, Gloucestershire, is a stunning, sprawling residential property located in Winchcombe Ward of Tewkesbury District, England. 211 pp text is tight, crisp and unmarked. Book fine, no names tears or soil. DJ in new mylar is a professional reproduction that shows a bit of color loss at spine ends, displays well in new mylar. Profusely illustrated with full color plates and many b/w line drawings. Lionel Edwards (1878-1966) was one of the most prolific of British sporting artists, and a gifted author as well. He studied under A. Cope and Frank Calderon at the School of Animal Painting in Kensington. Edwards was most at home in straight hunting sketches, and he became a favorite of the hunting fraternity, who even today find pleasure in the more than seventy books he illustrated. It was no accident that Mr. Lionel Edwards became a sporting artist. Art and hunting are in his blood. As a young man in a Kensington studio he never went out for long without attending a meet - usually on a borrowed horse. Those were the days when there were still hansoms to drive to the Derby, and Phil May and the London sketch club set the pace. Mr. Edwards recognized skill in making the hunting field live in his pictures is the result of hard work and long experience, and his book of reminiscences is as much (then) contemporary history of English foxhunting as an autobiography. He has followed most packs from the Quorn to the Royal Calpe including lesser known packs in his own west country, Wales and Ireland. He has been befriended by hunt servants and M.F.H., and he has many stories to tell, and still more serious comments to make on the ritual of hunting and the art of portraying hunters and huntsmen. Chapter headings: My Background is the Hills/ More or Less Autobiographical/ Post-War Memories/ Other People's Servants/ Midland Memories/ Pieces of Backchat/ Some Hunt Servants/ Irish Yesterdays/ Other People's Horses/ The Inexplicable/ Off Days/ Many Hunts/ Harriers and Beagles/ Christmas Numbers/ Animals and Art/ Ars Longa Vita Brevis/ Unanswered Queries/ Little Brothers of Man/ Recollections of the Road/ A Chapter of Accidents/ Questions and Answers. Seller Inventory # 48330

Bibliographic Details

Title: Reminiscences of a Sporting Artist

Publisher: Putnam & Co.

Publication Date: 1947

Binding: Hardcover

Condition: Near Fine

Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good

Edition: First Edition.