Lot 62: Thomas Sword Good , 1789-1872 the wigmaker's apprentice / practice makes perfect oil on panel

oil on panel

measurements note 41 by 31.5 cm.; 16 ¼ by 12 ½ in.

Literary Gazette, 31 May 1823, p. 347;
The Times, 12 November 1941, p. 6;
The Times, 16 December 1941, pp. 6-7, reproduced;
Sotheby's, Pictures from the Collection of Sir David and Lady Scott, 2008, pp. 40-41;ENGRAVED:
W. Morrison, published 1 March 1829.

London, Leicester Galleries, 1941 where bought by Brigadier-General Sir Ernest Makins (Lord Sherfield);
Thomas Agnew & Sons, (as 'The Barber' and attributed to William Henry Hunt), where bought by Sir David Scott, 19 May 1970 for £600

Thomas Sword Good's The Wigmaker's Apprentice or Practice Makes Perfect as it is better known, shows an apprentice boy in a barber's shop set to the task of sharpening a cut-throat razor on a leather strop. He stands with legs astride and with the strop grasped in his left hand. He then slides the blade over the smooth leather surface to achieve a sharp edge on the steel. This is presumably the back-room to the shop, and is littered with the impedimenta of the hair-dressing and wig-making business: jugs and basins, pattern-books, and wigs on stands; while on the far wall a banjo hangs and beside it a world map in Mercator's projection and a parrot standing on a perch. A newspaper is placed over the screen that is folded across the room, while a coat and silk-hat are hanging on the back of a chair. When the painting was first exhibited, at the Royal Academy in 1823, the intended narrative of the painting was made explicit by the inclusion of a sheep's head placed on a wig-stand and resting on the chair. The boy was therefore about to practice his skills as a barber by shaving the dead animal. This is how the scene appears in W. Morrison's 1829 engraving of the subject, but the artist later decided to eliminate the sheep's head, replacing it with a wig on a stand. This change may have been made because the humour of the original subject was considered too broad or in some way disagreeable to early Victorian tastes, and certainly seems to have been done by Good himself. When first exhibited, criticisms were made of the painting in the Literary Gazette on the grounds of the choice of subject, with regret being expressed 'that so much clever execution should have been bestowed upon what is at best merely whimsical'. Good was born in Berwick-upon-Tweed, and spent his early years there. In about 1810 he moved to London, working in the first instance as a house-painter but apparently also taking an interest in contemporary art. In the 1820s he seems to have operated between Berwick and London, sending works to exhibitions from an address in Henrietta Street, Covent Garden. Good was not a prolific artist, and for some reason ceased to exhibit in 1833. His paintings generally show people in interiors or occasionally in the open countryside in his native Northumberland and the Scottish Borders. In stylistic terms, Good's greatest debt seems to have been to the works of Sir David Wilkie and William Mulready, each of whom painted genre subjects with careful attention to the furnishings and decoration of interiors, and who used irradiating effects of light according to the traditions of Flemish art to make these interior spaces rich and beautiful to look at. The Literary Gazette concluded its account of Practice Makes Perfect with the recommendation that Good should continue 'his study of the Flemish School in all but their subjects', implying that the painter's realism was to be approved of, if not the bucolic humour. The present painting emerged from obscurity in 1941, when it was exhibited at the Leicester Galleries in London as the work of William Henry Hunt. This mistaken attribution was spotted by a hairdresser who happened to have a copy of Morrison's engraving of the subject in his shop (Fig 1), complete with lettered title and the artist's name, and who could therefore lead the gallery to a correct identification. It may be regarded as one of the most interesting and characteristic works by this rare and intriguing artist. Practice Makes Perfect belonged to Brigadier-General Sir Ernest Makins (1869-1959). His son, Roger Makins, the first Baron Sherfield, British Ambassador to Washington DC, built up one of the most remarkable of all collections of Pre-Raphaelite art, from which Millais's Mariana passed to the Tate after his death in 1996.