Arthur John Elsley - Artist's Biography

Arthur John Elsley, the son of a coachman and talented amateur artist, entered the Royal Academy Schools in 1876 where he learnt his trade. In 1889 he joined the North London studio of established artist and leading exponent of juvenile scenes, Fred Morgan (1847–1927). Morgan believed in the old adage that every picture tells a story. Elsley turned his portraiture skills to story-telling and soon became as successful as his mentor. Following his marriage in 1893, Elsley set up studio at his home 28 Finchley Road, St John’s Wood, London. Despite the move, the same four local street children also appear in Morgan’s work of this period.

‘At Bay’ follows in the tradition of children playing on a gate established by William Collins, RA in his painting entitled ‘Happy as a King’ exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1836. Elsley, while training at the Royal Academy Schools, would have studied the painting where it hung in the National Gallery. Rather than Collins' five bar gate, Elsley uses a lych-gate. Childhood fun and merriment run throughout Elsley’s work. Here the cheeky boy is jokingly encouraging the girls to kiss him under the mistletoe. The youngest girl and the boy feature in Elsley’s ‘Weatherbound’ (also 1898) sheltering from the falling snow with a collie dog, in an improvised kennel made out of an empty barrel. Three of the children are also seen walking, hogging an umbrella during snowfall, with an old man asking ‘Any Room for me’? This was painted the previous year in 1897. In 1900, again in the snow, two of the girls and the boy are featured again, with the boy giving the smaller girl a piggyback ride while she directs them home in ‘This Way’.

Elsley contracted measles as a youth which left him short-sighted. He always worked close to the canvas and paid careful attention, which is evident in the mistletoe and the worn shoes. He worked rapidly, completing at least five works in 1898. The artist always kept a ready supply of costumes for his young models in his studio ‘dressing-up-box’.

He painted nine snow-scenes plus others depicting Christmas subjects. There was a lucrative market for them as they were eagerly sought for reproduction as calendars, or by popular magazines (like ‘The Illustrated London News’) for use as large presentation prints, given away with the special Christmas number of the magazine. Fierce competition for circulation depended on the quality and popularity of the print and Elsley was the most popular reproduced artist of the period, and 'At Bay' was reproduced as a colour chromo-lithograph calendar re-named as ‘Pay Toll’.

Arthur John Elsley was born at 10 Derby Street in London. His father, John Elsley, was a coachman and a keen amateur painter, who according to “Pearson’s Magazine” in April 1898, offered “no opposition...to his choice of career”.

Elsley is often dismissed as a 'chocolate box' artist but this view disregards the fact that his work hung at the RA made him a highly-acclaimed artist. His work depicts a romanticised view of everyday life, an extremely popular approach during the industrial Victorian era. It wasn’t just the affluent middle classes who adorned their walls with Elsley’s paintings - his work was reproduced as prints, postcards and calendars and as a result appeared in many homes all over the country.

An early pencil sketch of ‘Vic’, a Cairn Terrier, show incredible potential and it was this early promise that led him to visiting the Zoological Gardens in Regents Park in 1874 to prepare his portfolio for his attempted entry to the South Kensington School of Art (later to become Royal Collage of Art). In 1876 Elsley became a probationer at the Royal Academy Schools to study under Frederick Pickersgill, Edward Armitage, John Marshall and Henry Bowler, and in 1878 Elsley had his first painting exhibited at the Royal Academy.

In 1881/2 he left the RA Schools, making a living from portrait commissions of children, horses and dogs. The Benett-Stanford family supported his work throughout his career and numerous portraits of family members and pets can still be seen in Preston Manor, Sussex, their family home.

In 1887 Elsley shared a studio on Gloucester Road with portrait artist George Grenville Manton, who introduced Elsley to fellow artist Fred Morgan and soon afterwards Morgan and Elsley shared a studio in St Johns Wood.

Elsley won a silver medal at the Crystal Palace Exhibition in 1891. The success he enjoyed in the following years enabled him to get married. It was in November 1893 that he was to marry Emily (Emm) Fusedale, his second cousin. Emily and her sister had modelled for Elsley for over ten years. They moved to 28 Finchley Road, St John’s Wood and Elsley had his own studio.

An important point in Elsley’s already prolific career came in 1894 when the artist Charles Burton Barber died. But Elsley didn’t simply slip into Barber’s role as the most prominent painter of children and animals. As the ‘Illustrated London News’ reported on the 25th January 1896:

“Mr Elsley appears more distinctly as a follower, though not an imitator, of Mr Burton Barber, differing from him by allowing his children more than one pet at a time and going beyond the limitations of a fox-terrier or a collie”.

The Elsley’s only child Majorie was born in 1903 and early paintings showed that she closely resembled one of Elsley’s early models, who was possibly one of Emm’s sisters or one of Elsley’s nieces. Majorie’s birth heralded a period of highly successful paintings from Elsley featuring his only child. However, this time of relatively high productivity was dramatically affected by the outbreak of World War 1. Elsley worked in a munitions factory and this had a detrimental effect on his already failing sight. However, despite his problems with his eyesight, he continued to paint up until 1931.

Elsley was a very skilled artist. He exhibited fifty-two works at the Royal Academy and many more at other important galleries. His achievement is even more remarkable in the light of his severe short-sightedness which led to him having to use opera glasses to see his models. His paintings remain very popular and highly sought after on today’s market.

Arthur John Elsley died at his home in Tunbridge Wells on the 19th February 1952 aged 92. After his cremation at Brighton Crematorium, his ashes were scattered in the Garden of Remembrance.

## Research taken from many available sources, the main reference however was “Golden Hours” The Paintings of Arthur J. Elsley by Terry Parker.