"Rails"

by Lionel Edwards

Gouttelette, Open Edition Print

Paper Size: 22 x 22 ins / 28 x 56 cm

Image Size: 7 x 18 ins / 18 x 46 cm

This is a wonderfully atmospheric painting by one of the finest sporting artists of the twentieth century. A tremendously enthusiastic fox hunter for most of his adult life, Lionel Edwards was superbly qualified to do the sport justice in his work; he did so to such a great extent that his hunting scenes remain hugely celebrated to this day. This painting is believed to have been executed in around 1912, during an eventful period in Edwards life. After his 1905 marriage, he and his wife Ethel had gone to live in Oxfordshire, before moving to Worcestershire in 1909. They stayed there for three years, but finding that the hunting country was not idealhaving too many woods, market gardens and orchards, Edwards took his wife and two young children to live in his mothers home at Benarth, in north Wales. The Edwardses thrived in this rural idyll: many miles from the nearest town, they were obliged to be self-supporting, and with their love of animals and of nature they took readily to a farmers life. They grew their own vegetables and kept pigs, cows and poultry, along with a couple of horses for transport. Needless to say, time was also found for hunting. Like so many others, their tranquil existence was to be shattered by the outbreak of the First World War; but this happy period of Lionel Edwards life had already inspired some of his most engaging work

watermarks do not appear on prints