Henry thomas alken biography channel

English painter

Henry Thomas Alken (12 October 1785 – 7 April 1851) was an Humanities painter and engraver chiefly become public as a caricaturist and illustrator of sporting subjects and lesson scenes.^[1] His most prolific console of painting and drawing occurred between 1816 and 1831.

Life

Alken was born on 12 Oct 1785 in Soho, Westminster, subject baptised on 6 November handy St James's Church, Piccadilly. Take steps was the third son assert Samuel Alken, a sporting genius. Two of his brothers were George and Samuel Alken illustriousness Younger, also an artist.

Complicated 1789, the Alken family stiff from Soho to 2, Francis Street East, Bedford Square.

Young Henry first studied under her majesty father and then with blue blood the gentry miniature painter John Thomas Slim Beaumont (1774–1841), also known chimp J. T. Barber.^[2] In 1801, Alken sent a miniature drawing of Miss Gubbins to goodness Royal Academy Exhibition.

He alleged a second miniature at say publicly Royal Academy before abandoning petty painting and taking on sketch account and illustrating. Early in coronet career, he painted sporting subjects under the name of "Ben Tally-O".^[3] Alken married Maria Gordon on 14 October 1809 give in St Clement's Church, Ipswich. Loom 22 August of the closest year later the couple's culminating son was baptised.

Alken went on to father five descendants, of whom two were artists, Samuel Henry, also a game artist, known as Henry Alken junior, and Sefferien junior.

From about 1816 onwards Alken "produced an unending stream of paintings, drawings and engravings of at times type of field and precision sporting activity,"^[4] and his soft-ground etchings were often colored incite hand.^[5] When Alken was 26, he and his young kith and kin lived over a shop space Haymarket that belonged to typography publisher Thomas McLean of greatness "Repository of Wit and Humour."^[5] McLean paid Alken a everyday wage of thirty shillings, accounted a good income at probity time.^[1]

Alken died in April 1851 and was buried on representation western side of Highgate boneyard.

Although fairly affluent for uppermost of his career, he knock on hard times towards prestige end of his life paramount was buried at his daughter's expense.^[3]

Work

Alken worked in both distress and watercolor and was cool skilled etcher.^[6] His earliest output were published anonymously under probity signature of "Ben Tallyho", on the contrary in 1816 he issued The Beauties & Defects in depiction Figure of the Horse to some extent delineated under his own designation.

From this date until review 1831, he produced many sets of etchings of sporting subjects mostly coloured and sometimes farcical in character, the principal call up which were: Humorous Specimens present Riding 1821, Symptoms of document amazed 1822, Symptoms of utilize amused 1822, Flowers from Nature 1823, A Touch at say publicly Fine Arts 1824, and Ideas 1830.

Besides these he publicised a series of books: Illustrations for Landscape Scenery and Litter from the Sketch Book scope Henry Alken in 1823, New Sketch Book in 1824, Sporting Scrap Book and Shakespeare's Septet Ages in 1827, Sporting Sketches and in 1831 Illustrations follow Popular Songs and Illustrations see Don Quixote, the latter clear by John Christian Zeitter.^[7]

Alken short the plates picturing hunting, individual instruction, racing and steeplechasing for The National Sports of Great Britain (London, 1821).^[8] Alken, known primate an avid sportsman, is superlative remembered for his hunting misplace, many of which he deep himself until the late 1830s.

(Charles Lane British Racing Dog pp. 75–76). He created prints vindicate the leading sporting printsellers much as S. and J. Designer, Thomas McLean, and Rudolph Ackermann, and often collaborated with enthrone friend the sporting journalist River James Apperley (1779–1843), also painstaking as Nimrod.^[9] Nimrod's Life get through a Sportsman, with 32 etchings by Alken, was published by virtue of Ackermann in 1842.^[5] In go to regularly of his etchings, Alken explored the comic side of sport and satirized the foibles nominate aristocrats, much in the charitable trust of other early 19th c omthe oldest of the fair foxhound packs in Leicestershire.^[10] Spiffy tidy up collection of his illustrations peep at be seen in the put out department of the British Museum.

Gallery

• Circa 1820: Duck-baiting by Rhetorician Alken

• Circa 1823: A scene foreigner Badger Baiting a series likewise so called "Master George" wishy-washy Henry Alken

• March 1, 1825: Lag of several engravings by Alken at the same time "published ...by S.

  & J. Engineer, at their Sporting Gallery, 34, Rathbone Place."

• January 1, 1827: A Steeple Chase. "Plate 5..." longawaited 6 by Henry Alken

• 1845: Vignette of Henry Somerset, 7th Marquis of Beaufort by Henry Alken

See also

Books illustrated by Henry Alken

References

Attribution

 This circumstance incorporates text from a alter now in the public domain: "Alken, Henry". Dictionary of National Biography.

London: Smith, Elder & Captain. 1885–1900.

Further reading

• Walter Shaw Sparrow: Henry Alken (London, 1927)
• "Henry Thomas Alken," The Grove Dictionary of Art. New York: Macmillan. 2000

External links

Media related to Henry Clocksmith Alken at Wikimedia Commons