John Emms

(British, 1843-1912)

The New Forest Buckhounds

Footnotes

Provenance
Anon. sale, Sotheby's, New York, 11 April 1997, lot 126.
Private collection, UK.

The two younger men in the painting were local Hampshire residents from the Gulliver family – one was a whipper-in and the other was a kennel-man for the New Forest Buckhounds in 1895. Their descendants are said to still live in Hampshire.

Emms particularly specialized in paintings of hounds at kennels and hunts in Hampshire, and the New Forest Hounds, perhaps the area's most well-known pack, were a frequent subject for the artist.

A keen huntsman with a consummate interest in the sporting field, John Emms had the rare ability to give real life to his subjects. He was at his very best when painting dogs; with confident use of fluid brushstrokes, he gives weight and solidity to their different physical characteristics as well as their individual temperaments. He used to walk to the kennels every day and return to his studio with one hound after another as he undertook preliminary sketches in working up to the overall composition.

Born in Blofield, Norfolk, the son of artist Henry William Emms, as a young man John Emms travelled to London where he worked as a studio assistant to Frederic, Lord Leighton. In the early 1860s, while Leighton was working on the fresco of The Wise and Foolish Virgins for St. Michael and All Angels Church in Lyndhurst, Emms – who is believed to have contributed the owl below the outstretched arms of the angel to right of centre – travelled with the great Pre-Raphaelite painter. This first visit to Hampshire would set the artist on the course that would ultimately define the rest of his career.

By 1872 he returned to Lyndhurst part-time while maintaining a studio in London and settled there permanently around 1881. Apart from the great natural beauty of this area of the New Forest, Lyndhurst also offered all manner of different types of hunting - pursuits very close to the artist's heart. A good horseman, avid huntsman and convivial guest, Emms soon found himself in high demand for the horse, hound, and dog portraits he painted for members of the peerage and landed gentry throughout the British Isles.

Emms cut a flamboyant figure, always dressed in a long black cloak and matching wide brimmed hat. He and his family led a somewhat bohemian life; when times were good, after selling a painting, he would take his wife Fanny, their three daughters and son up to London to stay in the best hotels and live life to the full. Highly respected during his lifetime, Emms left a great body of work.