Trolling for Pike in the River Lee

T03437 TROLLING FOR PIKE IN THE RIVER LEA 1831

Oil on canvas 14 × 17 9/16 (356 × 446)
Inscribed ‘J. Pollard 1831’ b.r.
Bequeathed by Mrs F. Ambrose Clark from the collection of the late F. Ambrose Clark through the British Sporting Art Trust 1982
Prov: ...; Arthur N. Gilbey, sold by his executors, Christie's 25 April 1940 (111, repr.) bt C. Dunlop, New York; F. Ambrose Clark after 1958; his widow Mrs F. Ambrose Clark
Exh: Loan Exhibition of Sporting Paintings, Viscount Allendale's, 144 Piccadilly, 1931 (74); Tate Gallery, August–September 1982, and York City Art Gallery, March–September 1984, with other paintings from Mrs F. Ambrose Clark's Bequest (no catalogue); Paintings exhibited by the British Sporting Art Trust, Vestey Gallery, National Horseracing Museum, Newmarket, April–December 1986 (unnumbered, repr.)
Engr: Aquatint by G. Hunt, pair to ‘Fly Fishing’, pub. J. Moore 1831 (Selway 1972, p.58, no.814)
Lit: Sir Walter Gilbey, Animal Painters, II, 1900, p.101; Walter Shaw Sparrow, Angling in British Art, 1923, p.103, repr. facing p.100; N.C. Selway, The Golden Age of Coaching and Sport, 1972, p.41, no.357

Pair to T03436 (q.v.). To ‘troll’ in angling is to fish with a running line. The 1940 sale catalogue of Arthur N. Gilbey's collection of angling pictures gives the following description of this scene: ‘Three anglers on the bank of a stream below a weir; one, standing, has hooked a Jack, whilst a second kneels by him with a gaff, and the third stands by with a rod over his shoulder and a creel in his hand, a live-bait can, rod covers, a fishing-seat and a creel on the ground beside them’.

A small sketch in pen and ink over pencil (5 × 7 1/4in) of this stretch of the river, without figures, is included in an album of Pollard's drawings in the British Museum (1933-10-14-278).

Published in:
The Tate Gallery 1982-84: Illustrated Catalogue of Acquisitions, London 1986