Sporting, Equestrian, Alken John, The Grand Leicestershire Fox Hunt, Set of 4 plates, 1839

Series of Four Aquatints

The Grand Leicestershire Fox Hunt

The Fox Chase in the oblong cartouche

 Date: 1839

Artist: Alken Henry

Engraver: Hunt

Publisher: Laird IW

Paper Size: 490 x 610mm

Print Size: 450 x 570mm

Plate1:450 x 570mm, Plate 2:450 x 570mm, Plate 3:450 x 570mm,  Plate 4:450 x 570mm

Condition: Paper condition good though darkened with age. Some watermarks visible on Plates 2 and 3

Technique: Aquatint

Price: Set of 4 for $1,000

Description: Aquatint, hand-coloured and varnished in places

Provenance: The Fox Chase, set of 4 plates

Oblong Cartouche on each plate

In the Centre of cartouche is a colophon comprised of crossed whips, fox’s brush, saddle, stirrups and huntsman’s cap.

Description of each plate in cartouche

Biography

Alken Henry 1785 – 1851

Alken was born on 12 October 1785 in Soho, Westminster, and baptised on 6 November at St James's Church, Piccadilly. He was the third son of Samuel Alken, a sporting artist. Two of his brothers were George and Samuel Alken the Younger, also an artist. In 1789, the Alken family moved from Soho to 2, Francis Street East, Bedford Square.

Young Henry first studied under his father and then with the miniature painter John Thomas Barber Beaumont (1774–1841), also known as J. T. Barber.

 In 1801, Alken sent a miniature portrait of Miss Gubbins to the Royal Academy Exhibition. He exhibited a second miniature at the Royal Academy before abandoning miniature painting and taking on painting and illustrating.

 Early in his career, he painted sporting subjects under the name of "Ben Tally-O". Alken married Maria Gordon on 14 October 1809 at St Clement’s Church, Ipswich. On 22 August of the following year later the couple's first son was baptised. Alken went on to father five children, of whom two were artists, Samuel Henry, also a sporting artist, known as Henry Alken junior, and Sefferien junior.

 From about 1816 onwards Alken "produced an unending stream of paintings, drawings and engravings of every type of field and other sporting activity," and his soft-ground etchings were often coloured by hand. When Alken was 26, he and his young family lived over a shop in Haymarket that belonged to print publisher Thomas McLean of the "Repository of Wit and Humour." McLean paid Alken a daily wage of thirty shillings, considered a good income at the time.

Alken died in April 1851 and was buried in Highgate cemetery. Although fairly affluent for most of his career, he fell on hard times towards the end of his life and was buried at his daughter's expense.

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