Beschreibung:

After GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS, O.M., R.A.
After GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS, O.M., R.A. Alfred Mynn watercolour on paper, unsigned, laid down on Eves and Sons mounting board 740 x 540mm. G.F. Watts is known to have produced the drawings for two series of cricket lithographs, a series of six prints illustrating batting strokes published in 1837-38 for which Felix was the model, and a pair of about 1840 entitled "The Batsman" and "The Bowler", whose subjects were Fuller Pilch and Alfred Mynn. Mynn (1807-1861), an all rounder, is renowned as the great champion of the Gentlemen, Kent and All England Elevens, and is one of very few early cricketers to earn a place in the Dictionary of National Biography. Watts' lithograph of "The Bowler" shows his highly distinctive and enormously powerful round arm action in two differing versions, one with a tent in the background, and one without. An inscribed original drawing for the former is at Lord's. The present watercolour appears to be a copy executed by an accomplished draughtsman, more closely linked to the version with the tent. While no tent features in the watercolour, the details of the playing field with its low hedge are only encountered in that version of the print which includes the tent. Neither version has the watercolour's incidental detail of two birds in the sky. It has the interest of being a period image, significantly larger than the lithograph, and of having passed through successive generations of the Mynn family, almost indubitably belonging to the "kind and manly" bowler himself. A conservator's report is available for this watercolour.