Summer Exhibition 2009

The Arts & Crafts Exhibits 

29. An oak and embossed leather Arts & Crafts fire screen with exposed pegged construction and cut-out decoration to the top rail for Liberty & Co of Regent Street. The embossed leather central screen decorated with Cecil Aldin's (1870 - 1935) work 'A Hunting Morning'  

Circa 1900. 

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Born in Slough on 28th April 1870, Cecil Aldin was educated at Eastbourne College and Solihull Grammar School. He studied art at the RCA and under Frank F. Calderon.

See detail of Aldin's decoration

Aldin illustrated hundreds of books throughout his lifetime, one of his first major commissions being Kipling's Jungle Stories. At 22, he took on a studio in Chelsea and began to obtain regular work and his illustrations were published in many magazines during the 1890s. In 1895 he married, moved to Chiswick and became one of a circle of artists who between them formed the London Sketch Club.

As Master of the South Berkshire Hunt, Aldin was a keen huntsman and many of his prints depict horses. Unusually, he also carried the horn with harriers, beagles and bassets, and drew animals of all kinds as well as his well-known hunting and coaching scenes, with humour and precision.

Cecil Aldin painted mainly in water-colour, but he was also famous for being a master of caricature in the drawing of both humans and animals. The quality of his art can be seen in most of his work, particularly in his many famous drawings of his family of dogs.

Cecil Aldin died in 1935 and his work is now highly collectable. He is regarded as being one of the most original and very best sporting artists of the twentieth century.