Book Description

Excerpt from British Sporting Artists From Barlow to Herring It is with more than usual pleasure that I commend to the English-speaking world the very remarkable book in which these lines are granted a place of honour; for it accomplishes, far better than I ever dreamt, a vision I had long cherished, an ideal I have inevitably postponed, and it will be warmly welcomed on each side of the Atlantic. Now that Charles Furse is dead, there is hardly a first-rate artist living, except Alfred Munnings, whose appreciation of the infinite possibilities of sport in art has been translated into such paintings as may be found among the best of the old masters in this volume. The portrait of the Prince of Wales on Forest Witch rightly deserved its special place in last year's Royal Academy, because Mr. Munnings had not only achieved a first-rate work of modern art, but had recalled the best traditions of the old sporting artist. What these traditions mean Mr. Shaw Sparrow has explained in the first pages of their kind which have ever - to my knowledge - begun to do justice to their subject; and I know most of them. What a subject it is! The best of English open-air life is portrayed by men who knew it well because they shared in it. If we only considered it as a record of two and a half centuries of England, it would be invaluable. But as a collection of actual examples, reproduced, it stands 3lonc in its contribution to our knowledge of a splendid company of painters. Any previous verdicts on Tillemans or Barlow (to take only two instances) will be transfigured by Mr. Shaw Sparrow's industry and taste. I have not merely admired his selection of pictures, I have read his text, and it is with full responsibility that I can commend both to his readers. I only hope they may leave me some small share of their gratitude. There arc pictures here which have never been reproduced before, and others which - by the new colour-processes employed - will make a brighter appeal than has ever been possible in works of this kind. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.