‘Waking Up’: Fore’s Coaching Recollections — A Very Large Hand-Coloured Aquatint, After Charles Cooper Henderson

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‘Waking Up’: Fore’s Coaching Recollections, Plate IV — A Large Hand-Coloured Aquatint
After Charles Cooper Henderson (1803–1877);
Engraved by Charles … Read more ‘Waking Up’: Fore’s Coaching Recollections, Plate IV — A Large Hand-Coloured Aquatint
After Charles Cooper Henderson (1803–1877);
Engraved by Charles Hunt;
Published by Messrs. Fores, 41 Piccadilly, London, 2 January 1843

A large, atmospheric, and powerfully composed hand-coloured aquatint depicting a Royal Mail coach and four at speed along an open country road — the fourth plate in the celebrated ‘Fore’s Coaching Recollections’ series after Charles Cooper Henderson.

The scene is entitled ‘Waking Up’, a coachman’s term for urging a team to greater effort on a long stage, and it captures that moment of controlled urgency with exceptional skill. The four-in-hand — two chestnuts as wheelers and two lighter-coloured horses as leaders, harnessed in the orthodox mail-coach manner — are shown straining forward at full pace, hooves raising a cloud of dust from the rutted road surface. The composition unfolds along a dramatic diagonal from lower left to upper right, the coach and horses sweeping across the picture plane with convincing momentum.

The coach itself is depicted with meticulous accuracy: a standard Royal Mail coach with its characteristic dark body, red wheels, and the royal cipher picked out on the door panel. Three outside passengers are visible on the box and roof — one on the box seat beside the coachman, two behind on the luggage-laden roof — all muffled in great coats against what the lowering sky suggests is a cold or blustery day. The sky is the most striking element of the composition: a broad, dramatic expanse of churning grey-blue cloud rendered with the tonal breadth and atmospheric conviction that distinguishes Henderson’s coaching subjects from more anecdotal treatments. The ground falls away to open moorland or downland on either side, the road cutting through a sparse and exposed landscape that reinforces the sense of speed and exposure.

The print carries the full series and plate identification at the upper margin: ‘FORES’S COACHING RECOLLECTIONS’ in spaced capitals, with ‘PLATE IV’ at upper right.

The lower margin reads: ‘PAINTED BY C.C. HENDERSON, ESQ.’ at left; ‘ENGRAVED BY C. HUNT.’ at right; and centrally: ‘LONDON: PUBLISHED JANY. 2ND 1843, BY MESSRS. FORES, AT THEIR SPORTING & FINE PRINT REPOSITORY AND FRAME MANUFACTORY, 41 PICCADILLY, Corner of Sackville Street. / WAKING UP. / From a Picture in the possession of Lord Macdonald.’

A co-publication line for the Paris firm of E. Gambart & Junin, 51 Rue Aumaire, appears at lower left, indicating simultaneous issue in France.

Dimensions
30¼ inches (76.8 cm) high,
38 inches (96.5 cm) wide,
1¼ inches (3.2 cm) deep, framed.

Provenance
From a picture formerly in the collection of Lord Macdonald (as recorded in the plate inscription, 1843); private American collection.

Condition: Good with with Truguard UV glass to protect from light damage.

Historical Context
Charles Cooper Henderson (1803–1877) is regarded as the finest painter of coaching subjects in the English school. Born at Chertsey, Surrey, the son of John Henderson (1764–1843), a distinguished amateur artist and patron of Girtin and Turner, and the grandson of the poet and man of letters George Keate (1729–1797), he was educated at Winchester and trained for the Bar, though he never practised law. His earliest artistic instruction was under Samuel Prout.

Henderson’s coaching pictures are distinguished from those of his contemporaries by their atmospheric seriousness and compositional ambition: where James Pollard’s coaching subjects tend toward the anecdotal and picturesque, Henderson’s approach is closer to the Dutch landscape tradition, using weather, light, and open ground to create pictures of genuine mood. His horses are observed with authority, and his coaches are accurate to a degree that makes his prints a primary source for the material history of the coaching era.

The ‘Fore’s Coaching Recollections’ series was the most prestigious and widely distributed of all English coaching print series. Originally issued in six plates between 1842 and 1843 — ‘Changing Horses’ (Plate I), ‘All Right’ (Plate II), ‘Pulling Up to Un-Skid’ (Plate III), ‘Waking Up’ (Plate IV), ‘The Olden Time’ (Plate V), and ‘The Night Team’ (Plate VI) — the first five were engraved by John Harris and the sixth by Henry A. Papprill. Plate IV, ‘Waking Up’, was instead engraved by Charles Hunt, one of the most accomplished aquatint engravers working in the sporting print trade at mid-century.

The series was published by Samuel William Fores of 41 Piccadilly, whose ‘Sporting & Fine Print Repository’ was the foremost London publisher of sporting subjects throughout the 1830s and 1840s.

Examples are held in numerous major collections including the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.

(Ref: NY11154-ncccx) See less