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EDINBURGH
25 SEPTEMBER - 24 OCTOBER
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JAMES HOWE (1780 - 1836)
BOY WASHING HORSES IN A STABLE
signed 'How'
pen and ink
27.3 x 40 cm 10 3/4 x 15 3/4 inches
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JAMES HOWE (1780 - 1836)
HORSE TETHERED IN A STABLE
signed 'How'
pen and ink
26.7 x 40.6 cm 10 1/2 x 16 inches
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JAMES HOWE (1780 - 1836)
TWO HORSES BY A FENCE
signed 'How'
pen and ink
27.3 x 40 cm 10 3/4 x 15 3/4 inches
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Howe did not attend the Trustees’ Academy but was, instead, apprenticed to the Norie family as a house painter and decorator. He moved to London in 1806 to pursue his career but met with limited success and two years later returned to Edinburgh. Humour and character are forefront in Howe’s pictures, also a love for high spirits and mischief in both animal and human life. Although a painter of less technical sophistication than his contemporaries, Howe’s work has all the vitality and authenticity of a scene understood and experienced by the artist.
In a series of ink drawings, three illustrated here, Howe has observed the behaviour and movement of horses. From racehorses, to hunters and work horses and mules, all are seen with compassion. At his best, line, movement and immediacy are expressed. Others depend more on their humour.
A volume of engravings after his drawings was published in Edinburgh by W.H. Lizars in 1824, entitled Fourteen Engravings from Drawings of the Horse, and a further series of prints entitled National Work depicting the breeds of horses and cattle in Scotland, was issued in three parts between 1829 and 1831 by Ballantyne & Company of Edinburgh.
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Geikie had an eye for Edinburgh street life, and produced brilliant satirical studies of Scottish life. His drawings are often witty although at the same time show real poverty with understanding. The scenes which best convey this are these simple groups which explore the relation of characters to each other. His treatment of urban subject matter founded on social realism was unusual in the early nineteenth century, but allowed for the good humour he shared with his contemporaries.
Left deaf and dumb from an illness from the age of two, Geikie studied at the Trustees’ Academy under Alexander Wilson, who introduced him to his future patron the Earl of Hopetoun. Following his death, a collection of his work was published as Etchings Illustrative of Scottish Character and Scenery, from which these plates are taken. The posthumous publication of the book in 1841 bolstered Geikie’s reputation and gave wider exposure to his work.
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