Description
The publisher described the print in an advertisement in an 1893 edition of its quarterly sporting publication Fores’s Notes (and recommended The Sportsman’s Dream [search our website for this print] as a companion piece, which we also have in stock):
The Central Figure represents a modern University sportsman puffing a cigarette in front of his fireplace. Over the mantelpiece are depicted the insignia of learning and sport; the latter, as may be supposed, predominating; while at his feet are three fox-terriers. Surrounding him are sporting and other incidents connected with his ‘Varsity’ life.
Cuthbert Bradley was an English painter, sporting writer and magazine illustrator. He studied architecture at King’s College in London. After graduating, he wrote for The Field and illustrated for Vanity Fair and Fores’s Sporting Notes and Sketches. Some of his paintings and sketches of polo and fox hunting scenes were published as prints by Fores. He also made oil portraits of fox hunting dogs. His paintings are in the collections of the British National Trust and the Leicester County Council Museum.
Fores was an English print publisher and printseller founded in London in 1783 by Samuel William Fores (1761-1838) and continued by his heirs for 200 years. S.W. Fores specialized in caricature prints. After his death in 1838, his sons George Thomas Fores (1806-1858) and Arthur Blücher Fores (1814-1883) took over as Messrs. Fores Sporting and Fine Print Repository, changing the focus largely to horse sporting subjects including riding, hunting, racing, steeple chase, polo, and coaching. Messrs. Fores published works by the foremost British horse and equestrian artists of the day, including Alken, Pollard, Sartorius and J.F. Herring, Sr. They also published Fores’s Sporting Notes and Sketches, a quarterly magazine. Descendants of George Thomas Fores continued to run the company until well into the 20th century. The remaining stock of the firm was acquired in the early 21st century by Stephen Ling of Brackley, Northamptonshire.
Full publication information: Cuthbert Bradley Inv. et Del. 1885. Published August 10th 1885, by Messrs. Fores, 41 Piccadilly, London.
References:
“Cuthbert Bradley.” Wikipedia. 10 July 2013. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuthbert_Bradley (15 August 2014).
Fores’s Notes: A Quarterly Magazine Descriptive of British, Indian, Colonial and Foreign Sport. Vol. 10. London: Messrs. Fores’s, 1893. p. 8. Online at Google Books: https://books.google.com/books?id=YUkFAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA312 (3 March 2015).
“S.W. Fores (biographical details).” The British Museum.http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/search_the_collection_database/term_details.aspx?bioId=124910 (15 October 2013).
