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Arthur John Elsley

Born in 1860, the son of a coachman, Arthur John Elsley 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, Elsley quickly rose to fame as one of the most beloved and commercially sought after "chocolate box" artists of late Victorian England. His depiction of children and animals, and 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 Elsley could command high sums for their work. It comes as no surprise that the commercial success of Elsley's paintings was also due in grand part to the wide diffusion of his work in the public realm. It is fair to say that his cozy interpretations of family life and the often humorous interactions of children and animals became associated with 'popular culture' of the day. His paintings were routinely reproduced for use in color 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 Elsley shared a studio for a time, the use of particularly bright colors is a defining characteristic central to his artistic technique. It is known that in preparation for compositions that depict characters in an outdoor setting, 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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