Lot 245: EDWARD THOMPSON DAVIS 1833-1867

AN ALBUM OF FIGURE DRAWINGS, LANDSCAPES AND DESIGNS FOR PICTURES

AN ALBUM OF FIGURE DRAWINGS, LANDSCAPES AND DESIGNS FOR PICTURES

measurements note
album sheet measures 53 by 38 cm., 21 by 15 in.

including the back of the artist's house in Northwick Worcester, a cottage opposite the artist's house in Northwick Worcester, portrait studies of Richard Morrack Rowe, Ellen Smith, study after an etching by Sir David Wilkie, a young boy asleep on a milestone (2), Picnicers (2), White Cap, a kitchen hearth, a figure waiting for the post, Hallow, design for 'The Pedlar', A Nightmare, Administering Angel, The Message of Death, a view near Rome, a couple kissing under mistletoe, docks (4), cows in a field, horses grazing, cats (7), a child learning to walk, design for 'Granny's Spectacles', views near Derby (2), Keileston, Worcester, an open window at the artist's lodgings at Littleover near Derby, an arm, a foot, hands (14), Theseus, St.Sebastian, Hipppocrates (2), studies of a mouth, a girl giving fruit to little ones, a clock, Evening Prayer, a girl crying in the midst of a school room, A Parting Gift, St John's Worcester, the hands of a boy playing a pipe (2), design for 'Card Playing - Mother Losing' (2), window of Mrs Hunt's cottage, a dog running, designs for 'The Breakfast Table' (2), Captain Montague, Blackley Church Chipping Campden, design for the etching 'Sunday', portrait of the artist's father, The Evening Lesson, design for 'Marble Playing', a pineapple, a vase of flowers, a bat, cobblestones, a cart, a donkey, an ash tree at Wakefield, design for 'Parting Words', the village spring, Kenilworth, studies of the arrangement of colour, St Michael's Mount Cornwall, Dove Dale (2) and other subjects

approximately four hundred and forty-six drawings, seven sheets of notes, three drawings by other hands (a signed drawing of a horse by Benjamin Williams Leader, a caricature by Mr Wilcke of Handley Castle, Worcestershire, and a study of a cart and horses by Reverend Rowe of Penzance)
twenty-eight signed, one hundred and forty six dated between 1850 and 1866, most inscribed with notes, with a description of the volume and a short biography of the artist written on a seperate sheet by his brother, E.J.Davis

mostly pen and ink, some pencil and a few chalk or watercolour, some with drawings verso, bound between blue boards with leather spine (damaged) and corners

PROVENANCE

By descent from the artist to his brother, E. J. Davis, 1879;
Anonymous sale, Christie's, 27th July 1951, lot 18

NOTE

(an album)

There is little biographical information on Edward Thompson Davis, but we know that he lived and worked in Worcester. An obituary in the 1867 Art Journal records that, having learnt to draw as a child in Worcester, he briefly enrolled at the Birmingham School of Art. He later returned to his home town and continued his studies for a further three years at the School of Design. His early drawings and oil paintings were apparantly much admired by his friends and clients in Worcester and 'testified to his excellent training and predilection for Art.' (Art Journal, 1867, p.188).

Davis exhibited nineteen paintings of rustic genre subjects at the Royal Academy between 1854 and 1876. Titles of exhibited pictures include A Drink at the Pump and On the Way to School. The Peg Top, which was sold at Christie's on 25th October 1991, lot 6, was displayed at the Royal Academy in 1867, the year of his death. It appears that most of these works, and indeed the designs included in the present album, were set in the streets or surrounding countryside of Worcester.

Davis is known to have visited Italy at the end of his life. He died in Rome on 12th June 1867 where, according to his obituarist, he had been studying for some time.

In 1951 the contents of another album of drawings by Edward Thompson Davis was sold by Colnaghi's. Various fine and detailed pencil, pen and ink drawings were taken from this album and now exist in the collections of Eton College and the Cecil Higgins Art Gallery, Bedford