"The Freshwater Vale"

by Snaffles

Gouttelette, Open Edition Print

Paper Size: 11 x 8 ins / 28 x 21 cm


One of the great names from British sporting art of the 20th Century. Published as goutelettes on high quality paper

The Peshawar Vale was originally published in 1932 and appeared in a number of variants. The subject derives from Snaffless Indian period, which began in 1927 when he sailed to India via the Suez Canal and stayed with his friend Taffy Walwyn. During his time in India he travelled extensively with sporting friends and enjoyed a Raj lifestyle with sahibs and servants, polo and shooting, clubs and messes, and plenty of shikar, or field sports. He also spent a considerable time with one of the famous Indian cavalry regiments, the Scinde Horse, from which many of his Indian-period sketches and paintings derive. He also traveled throughout northern India up the Khyber to Peshawar, Meerut and Muttra. In Peshawar he stayed with Major Victor Wakely, whipper-in to the Peshawar Vale Hounds. The Peshawar Vale Hunt met at 6 oclock in the morning to pursue jackal over a stiff country of banks, ditches and rivers, into one of which Snaffles notably fell. Whilst with the Peshawar Vale Hunt, his host was Colonel Kerans, who remarked to him that the countryside through which they hunted was not unlike that of Limerick and Meath. When The Peshawar Vale was eventually published, he therefore added to one of the variants the caption Begad! This would stop them Meath fellers. The rider in the foreground may be Colonel Kerans himself.



watermarks do not appear on actual prints