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John George Sowerby 1Original watercolour Victorian children's book illustration by Sowerbycirca 1880
circa 1880
About the Item
JOHN GEORGE SOWERBY
(1849-1914)
Tailpiece for “A Rainy Day”
Watercolour heightened with white, circular
Unframed, in mount only
Diameter 7 cm., 2 ¼ in.
(mount size 25.5 by 20 cm., 10 by 8 in.)
Reproduced:
J G Sowerby & Thomas Crane, At Home, Marcus Ward & Co, 1881, p.17.
The current work was reproduced in Sowerby and Crane’s 1881 children’s book, At Home, where is accompanied by the following verse:
The whole morning it rained,
The whole afternoon too;
Little Lilly complained
That it rained and it rained,
And to Edward explained
That she’d nothing to do. –
All morning it rained,
All the afternoon too.
Now Ned did not mind
The tempestuous weather,
For he always could find
Some food for his mind;
But Edward was kind:
See them sitting together –
Now Lill does not mind
The tempestuous weather.
“What shall I draw next?”
She asks every minute,
And Ned is not vexed
When she asks him “What next?”
Yet is always perplexed
About how to begin it;
He just shows her “what next,”
Almost every minute.
John George Sowerby was born into a prosperous Gateshead family of glass manufactures and artists. He inherited the family business, the Ellison Glass Works, one of the world’s largest producers of pressed glass, where he introduced designs inspired by the Arts and Crafts movement. Initially he combined his energies at the glass works with his work as an illustrator and painter of landscapes and floral subjects with a Pre-Raphaelite intensity, strong colours and rich detail. He exhibited many of these paintings at the Royal Academy. In the 1880s he collaborated with Newcastle artist, Henry Hetherington Emmerson, on illustrations for the children’s books Afternoon Tea (1880) and The May Blossom (1881). Although were critically very well received but the publications were attacked by Kate Greenaway who considered them too close to her own work. Sowerby then went on to produce highly aesthetic illustrated books At Home (1881) and At Home Again (1883), with decorations by Thomas Crane. Gleeson White, editor of The Studio magazine stated that in Afternoon Tea Sowerby “set a new fashion for ‘aesthetic’ little quartos’ (The Studio, 1897). Roger Dixon in Belfast Publishing (Oxford University Press, 2011, p.79) considered these At Home and At Home Again to be “among the loveliest books ever produced.” Never very wise as a business man, in the early 1880s he left Ellison Glass Works being declared bankrupt in 1884. He returned to the works again as a paid employee.
Sowerby’s daughter, Millicent Sowerby, followed in her father’s footsteps and became a successful children’s book illustrator. His daughter, Githa, is best-known for writing the play Rutherford & Son, the main protagonist being a thinly-veiled portrait of her father and his business failings.
- Creator:John George Sowerby 1 (1849 - 1914)
- Creation Year:circa 1880
- Dimensions:Height: 2.76 in (7 cm)Diameter: 2.76 in (7 cm)
- Medium:
- Movement & Style:
- Period:
- Condition:
- Gallery Location:London, GB
- Reference Number:Seller: 26521stDibs: LU102839978572
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