Edward Hodges Baily (1788-1867)
As a collector, I never quite know what I am looking for, or what will interest me, until I see it. Happenstance and circumstance play a large part, whether in person with a dealer, at auction or online marketplace, or in conversation with artist-friends and colleagues.
Cue an aged plaster maquette in need of some TLC, gift from an artist friend. It had been in the Earl’s Court studio of her grandfather, the Wales-born London-domiciled painter Christopher Williams (1873-1934), and subsequently passed down through his family. We knew not the maker, the subject or the date of production. It is clearly not a cast from the antique such as that which might have been found in many a Victorian studio. It is freely modelled in plaster on a wire armature.
To be continued …
Robert Meyrick 