Leo Webster
Senior Specialist
Lot 113
James Albert Buchanan Jay(British, 1838-1888)Four Studies of Dogs
8 November 2023, 14:00 GMT
Edinburgh£500 - £700
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James Albert Buchanan Jay (British, 1838-1888)
Four Studies of Dogs
To be offered with an additional pen and ink sporting dog sketch
four signed 'JABJay' and each dated variously in 1881
pencil heightened with white
16 x 24cm (6 5/16 x 9 7/16in) and smaller. (5)
To be offered with an additional pen and ink sporting dog sketch
four signed 'JABJay' and each dated variously in 1881
pencil heightened with white
16 x 24cm (6 5/16 x 9 7/16in) and smaller. (5)
Footnotes
A family 'Grand Tour' scrapbook from the 1850s shows Jay's skill at painting and drawing at a young age. In 1863 he was enrolled as a probationer at the Royal Academy Schools having been recommended by John Foley RA. He surprisingly seems to have primarily studied sculpture in his seven years there. His professors were Richard Westmacott RA from 1863-8 and Henry Weekes RA from 1868-70.
In 1870 he embarked on his artistic career specialising in the genre of equestrian and 'sporting' painting, unsurprising, as his great passion seems to have been hunting and the horse. He had connections to the Dusseldorf Art scene, and he almost certainly mentored and was mentored by the English painter Erenest Crofts, later an RA. Crofts painted a study of Bertie and a friend at dinner in an unidentified German interior, dated 1887.
Jay exhibited at the RA in 1878 and 1880 and the Walker Art Gallery 1881. He exhibited three equestrian paintings in Dundee in October 1885 – January 1886.
1888 was very busy, according to his sister Caroline, they last met at his sister-in-law's in Thurloe Sq in March, he was in Berlin in April, and left England for Australia in the summer in pursuit of commissions from racehorse owners. He was ill before he left and travelling 3rd class did not help, he looks old and frail in a last photo taken before he left, and sadly he died in Sydney in the October.
He left a widow Alice and three daughters, one of whom Cecil Jay became a successful painter in her own right.