The title of a favorite page in the old Military Modelling magazine (which I believe has recently announced it's demise?), but absolutely fitting to this post.
I have found among my mothers possessions all sorts of things she never mentioned, one of which was this, which I initially assumed was Great Aunt Nina's (my mother's GA, I'm not sure what her relation to me is, great aunt once removed, great-great aunt?), better known as Helena Hall, an artist/designer who worked with Eric and Gordon Gill and others of that late Arts & Craft/ early Modernist movement in Sussex, but it's not really her style (I have a lot of her work from my Mother's late cousin Betty (of odd jobs in occupied Vietnam!)), so I suspect it's actually the work of John Henry Sheren Hall, one of my Grandfather's brothers.
He was a known naive artist (also of Suffolk) but these are quite different from his pastels and watercolours, so, because I'm not sure, and know nothing else about it, I'm just putting them up here for the figure modellers and painters, as they are clearly studies from the 1900-30's (some clues suggest pre-WWI and no later that 1922 - the amalgamation of the two Life Guard's regiments?) of uniforms, mostly colonial-ceremonial, but one or two fit WWI era regular barrack/parade-dress.
There are other things in the sketch book, none signed, which we will look at another day, and the book itself is tiny, an imperial size closest to modern A6 or A7 (or 'policeman's notebook') which made it easy to crop them all at the A4 setting, and is a 36 leaf George Rowney 'Cartridge Ring Bound' (No.7268) undated, but it might help date them.
The sketches are all pen & ink with some having added colour, probably watercolour, or thinned gouache? I hope you enjoy; I think they are rather lovely.
6 comments:
Interesting uniform sketches, a bit like the Vanished Armies uniform sketchbook Hello Hugh - I have a loose family connection to Ditchling (relatives in the surrounding countryside area) so I have long known about the village and its arts and crafts connection.
Your Ditchling connection of Helena Hall if you have ephemera, sketchbooks etc is one that might be interesting to the https://www.ditchlingmuseumartcraft.org.uk
I have a suspicion that some of the sketches are copies of old prints (by...name something like Simkin?). Still very nice.
Cheers Mark, I will have to do something with it all, I've found an A4 pile of Grandad's stuff about 2-meters tall, which will have to go to the British Library, IWM or Nat. Maritime Museum! His visitors book from Delhi has every major officer in the allied armies of the far east in '46/47, the last independent Maharaja's and Mountbatten of Burma! Every name I can make out, has his own Wikipedia page!
Andy - certainly the four I've highlighted (and possibly the last three pages?) seem both better executions and slightly familiar, the Boar War chap is a much used pose. The artist's own style is slightly twisted shoulders and slightly bowed legs, I feel?
H
Andy - might be Harry Payne (1858–1927) or from Rafael Tuck prints?
H
A grand look into the past. Thanks for posting!
Cheers Jan; Thanks for passing!
H
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