Arthur John Elsley

Artist Biography

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Arthur John Elsley was born in November 1860, the son of a coachman, he joined the South Kensington School of Art at the age of fourteen. He submitted his first exhibit to the Royal Academy in 1878 and continued to paint thereafter until 1917.

Well acquainted with his contemporaries Frederick Morgan and Charles Burton Barber, Arthur John Elsley quickly rose to fame as one of the most beloved and commercially sought after artists of late Victorian England. His depiction of children and animals, and his idealized portrayal of their world, appealed to the middle and upper classes of society. In light of the high rate of infant and child mortality in Victorian England at the time, this genre became enormously popular and artists like Arthur John Elsley could command high sums for their work. It comes as no surprise that the commercial success of Elsey’s paintings was also due in part to the wide diffusion of his work in the public realm. It is fair to say that his cosy interpretations of family life and the often-humorous interactions of children and animals became associated with ‘popular culture’ of the day. The paintings of Arthur John Elsley were routinely reproduced for use in colour calendars published by the American firm Thomas D. Murphy Company, soap advertisements, as well as for the cover of publications such as Bibby’s Quarterly.

As with the work of his contemporary Frederick Morgan with whom Arthur John Elsley shared a studio for a time, the use of particularly bright colours is a defining characteristic central to his artistic technique. It is known that in preparation for compositions that depict characters in an outdoor setting, Arthur John Elsley actually painted his figures in an indoor studio and was known to borrow scenic countryside panoramas from photographs in Country Life Magazine to work up his backgrounds.

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