St. Bernard Dog Portrait -- "I Hear a Voice"
Print after Maud Earl, 1898

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I Hear a Voice St. Bernard dog print
Detail of dog's head Detail of artist's signature
Maud Earl (1864-1943) (after)
Herbert Edward Sedcole (b. 1864) (engraver)
"I Hear a Voice"
W. Scott Thurber, Chicago: 1898
Harry C. Dickens, London (additional publisher)
Engraving, uncolored, on chine appliqué
Signed in the plate, lower left
23.25 x 28.5 inches, image
27.25 x 32 inches, platemark
32 x 37.25 inches, overall
Sold, please inquire as to the availability of similar items.

Portrait of the prize St. Bernard dog Frandley Stephanie, born in 1891. The title and setting allude to the origins of the breed as rescue dogs in the St. Bernard Pass of the Swiss Alps. The dog stands in swirling snow, gazing upward and, as the title "I Hear a Voice" suggests, listening alertly, as if she had been sent into a winter storm to find lost travelers. The pedigree history of the dog and her awards are noted in the lengthy subtitle below the image:

(Portrait of the Champion St. Bernard "Frandley Stephanie") Born May 17th 1891. Her Sire being "Young Plinlimmon" and her Dam "Falala." These being descendants of the following famous dogs, "Plinlimmon and Nora of Addiwell" "Mayor General and Myra" "Pilgrim and Bessie" "Baynard and Bernie." Among many other Prizes gained by "Frandley Stephanie" at the leading Dog Shows, she has Twice won the Hundred Guinea Challenge Cup; and has obtained over a dozen Gold and Silver Medals and Cups.

Maud Earl was a painter and illustrator of animal subjects, perhaps the pre-eminent British painter of dogs in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Her work was the subject of a 2004 exhibition at the Kennel Club Art Gallery in the U.K., which deemed her “one of the most important canine artists Britain has produced."

Earl came from a family of sporting painters that included her uncle, Thomas Earl, and half-brother Percy, as well as her father George Earl, a successful sporting artist who taught her drawing and anatomy. She first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1884. Her first solo exhibition in 1897 at the Graves Gallery, Pall Mall, London, included a portrait of two famous Irish Setters, and as her reputation grew, she made commissioned portraits of dogs belonging to Queen Victoria and King Edward VII. Major breeders also engaged her to depict their dogs, and her works were included in a number of books, including The Pointer and his Predecessors by William Arkwright, Memories by John Galsworthy, and The Power of the Dog by A. Croxton Smith. 24 of her dog prints were issued in British Hounds and Gun-Dogs (1902).

Earl emigrated to America in 1916, maintaining a studio in New York City until she died. There she branched out into painting exotic birds as well as dogs, and experimented with different styles, including one she called “Orientalist,” influenced by Asian art. In addition to the British Kennel Club, her works are in the collection of the American Kennel Club and museum collections, and remain popular subjects for poster reproductions.

Herbert Edward Sedcole was a British etcher, mezzotint and mixed-method engraver, mainly of genre and sporting subjects after old master painters and contemporaries such as Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Edwin Landseer. Born in London, he studied with the engraver Joseph Bishop Pratt and lived in Hertfordshire.

The W. Scott Thurber Gallery was one of the early Chicago art galleries, opening in 1880. Thurber dealt mainly in European and American paintings and prints in a conservative style, but was also the city’s most progressive gallery, introducing Chicagoans to the works of the early Modernists, such as Arthur Dove. In 1909, the gallery was redesigned by Frank Lloyd Wright.

Full publication information: W. Scott Thurber, 210 Wabash Avenue, Chicago. Harry C. Dickens, 16 Regent Street, London.

References:

Bénézit, E. Dictionnaire critique et documentaire des Peintres, Sculpteurs, Dessinateurs et Graveurs. France: Librairie Gründ, 1966. Vol. 3, p. 473.

Mackenzie, Ian. British Prints: Dictionary and Price Guide. Woodbridge, Suffolk, England: Antique Collectors Club, 1987. p. 286.

Prince, Sue Ann. The Old Guard and the Avant-Garde: Modernism in Chicago, 1910-1940. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990. p. 25. Online at Google Books. http://books.google.com/books?id=mfmwZwmza8IC.

“Temporary Exhibition: Maud Earl, Her Life and Works.” The Kennel Club. 2004. http://www.the-kennel-club.org.uk/gallery/past_exhibition1.shtml (12 November 2004).