Wilder, F.L. English Sporting Prints. (Book Review) - LA84 Foundation

F. L. Wilder, English Sporting Prints (London: Thames and Hudson,
1974) 224 pp., illustrated.
Sporting art appears to be enjoying a renaissance of late,
probably as a reflection of the international interest in sport
in general. There appears to be an increasing number of articles
on the subject in various popular magazines and professional
journals; as well as a large number of exhibitions of
sporting objects d’art in numerous countries, either in museums
or halls of fame or in connection with the Olympic Games,
Commonwealth Games, and other sports festivals. More commercial
sponsors seem to be involved in such enterprises, also.
The recent Prudential Collection entitled “Great Moments in
201

202
Canadian Sport”, consisting of seventeen 12¾” x 16½” color
prints, is but one prominent example.
Another identifiable aspect of this movement is the recent
willingness of publishers to reprint books in this area. William
A. Baillie - Grohman’s significant work: Sport in Art:
From the Fifteenth to the Eighteenth Century, first published
in London in 1925, was re-issued by Benjamin Blom of New
York in 1969. Similarly, Ralph Nevill’s Old Sporting Prints (first
published in 1908) and Walter Shaw Sparrow’s British Sporting
Artists (first published in 1922), have both been reprinted between
1965 and 1970 by Spring Books. Sport historians should
be grateful that such works are now readily available to them.
The artist can often be a social historian, and the study of sporting
art through the ages is a rewarding experience for anyone
interested in the history of sport. Currier and Ives, for instance,
made more lithographs during the second half of the
nineteenth century than anyone else in America, and who can
doubt that their colorful prints of famous athletic events in the
United States during this period are worthy of attention?
Most literary attention, however, has been devoted to the
sporting prints of the United Kingdom, and F.L. Wilder’s 1974
offering is the latest of this genre. English Sporting Prints, in
fact, has some inherent virtues lacking in the other texts.
Nevill’s book is certainly attractive and useful, but even more
full of pictures of horses than such books tend to be. And not
only horses but an abundance of coaches is evident as well
(many of them in snow drifts). The classification of its contents
- “List of Illustrations”, “Old Sporting Prints”, “List of Exceptionally
Attractive Prints” and “A Record of the Principal
Sporting Prints Sold by Auction, 1901-1908” - leaves a lot to be
desired and is hardly inspiring or well organized. Sparrow’s
work is much more comprehensive in nature and solid in detail,
dealing with British sporting artists from Francis Barlow
and his contemporaries in the seventeenth century to J. F.
Herring and William Huggins in the nineteenth century. Chapters
proceed chronologically according to the lives of the artists,
an efficient and logical if somewhat uninteresting technique.
Without a doubt, the analysis of the work and influence
of such people as Peter Tillemans, John Wootton, and
George Stubbs, give credence to the view of Sparrow’s work as
“a classic critical survey of a specialized aspect of British art”.
F. L. Wilder has taken a different approach in this latest publication
and one that should appeal to sport historians. The organization
of the book’s contents is pragmatic and useful. Perhaps
the fact that the plates (all in color, incidentally) are classified
according to the sport they depict is the most notable feature
in this regard. The reader can find illustrations of the fol-

lowing sports in their appropriately labelled sections: Horses
and Racing, Steeplechasing, Hunting, Shooting, Coursing, Fishing,
Boxing, Fencing, Archery, Cricket, Billards, Ice skating, and
Coaching. Alongside each plate is a description giving its title,
artist, actual size, and the technique used (i.e. “mezzotint”,
“coloured aquatint with etched outline”, etc.), and an historical
analysis of the scene by the author. More often than not these
literary portraits are good value, although many are too brief
and one wishes that Mr. Wilder could have written more
about several plates. Whenever possible the author has thoughtfully
stated from which collection each plate is taken, and not
surprisingly the majority belong to the outstanding Mellon
Foundation.
There is also an interesting section entitled “Processes”
which explains the technique used for etching, soft-ground
etching, aquatint, stipple-engraving, line-engraving, mezzotint,
lithography, printing, and the coloring of prints. For
readers who are ignorant of the technology involved to produce
such elegant sporting prints, the details provided are most
informative.
Another section entitled “Reprints” has educational merit
as the author informs us of the essential differences between
first editions and reprints, and how to identify them. He has
also provided “a list of most of the known examples” of reprints
as a guide.
The “Introduction”, of some fifteen pages, is an admirably
condensed essay on the subject of English sporting prints and
offers the reader many insights concerning the artists and their
subjects, comments which indeed serve to bring the era to
life. But the section which immediately follows, entitled
“Sporting Writers”, is of limited value as it deals with only
three: Charles James Apperley (who wrote under the pseudonym
of “Nimrod”), Henry Hall Dixon, and Robert Smith Surtees.
Any reader would obviously be better advised to consult A.
Henry Higginson’s mammoth British and American Sporting
Authors (1951) for information on sporting writers of the
period. The fact that English Sporting Prints does not include
either a bibliography or index may be further cause for mild
grievance. Certainly the production of the volume leaves
nothing to be desired as it has been most handsomely printed
in West Germany.
The sporting print can record specific and memorable events
in the sporting world in an aesthetic way which affords immediate
and lasting pleasure. F. L. Wilder, who has been a specialist
in sporting prints for more than fifty years, has provided here
a personal and detailed history of the artists and printers who
produced them in England during the eighteenth and nine-
203

204
teenth centuries; and recreates in a unique and useful manner
an important time and place in the history of sport, Anyone
interested in the relationship between sport and art cannot
afford to be without this book.
Gerald Redmond
University of Alberta