A Fairy Tale by Arthur Wardle

A Fairy Tale by Arthur Wardle RBI RBA, 1864-1949. Oil on canvas. 115 x 165 centimetres. "All seemed to Sleep, the timid Hare on Form" -- Scott. Exhibited at the Royal Academy, 1895 (no. 222).

[The Enchanteress] 1901
Oil on canvas
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In the first two decades of the twentieth century, Arthur Wardle was, perhaps, the best-known living British wild animal painters. He portrayed an astonishing diversity of subjects with an engaging naturalism, and a command of different media. Unlike most British animal and sporting artists who restricted themselves to horse and hound, deer and domesticated beasts, Wardle both drew and painted every mammal from elephant to mouse - in watercolour, pastel and oil pigment. Arthur Wardle often incorporated exotic animals into his mythological works, for example A Bacchante (1909) and Forest Lovers (1917). In The Enchantress, the decadent encounter between a beautiful woman and three leopards is intensified by Wardle’s use of intoxicating purple and the luxurious texture of the seductress’s robe. Wardle’s first work, Study of Cattle on the banks of the Thames, was accepted for exhibition at the Royal Academy in 1880, when he was just sixteen. His first major work to feature wild animals was entitled Panthers Resting, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1891. From then on, animals became a key element in many of his more important works, such as Leopards Drinking (1896), The Tiger Pool (1897); Jaguar and Macaw (1899); Puma and Turkey (1902), Lions: sunset (1913) and Indian Leopards (1916).
Peter Nahum