Charles Napier Hemy

(British, 1841-1917)

'Bass Fishing' 66 x 91.4cm. (26 x 36in.)

Footnotes

Painted in 1888.

Provenance:
bears inscription on label on reverse 'bought May 30th 1913 from the famous McCulloch collection at Christies... W.W. Sampson'

Exhibited:
Guildhall, 1897, no. 259.

George McCulloch (1848-1907), was a Scottish mining engineer who made a huge fortune from the Broken Hill gold mine in Australia, which he won in a game of penny nap, (a card game similar to whist ). He built up an astonishing collection of paintings and was reported to have spent more than £200,000 on contemporary art. He and his wife lived at 184 Queen's Gate, Kensington, and are shown sitting in front of their collection in a photograph reproduced in The Victorian Art World in Photographs (Jeremy Maas, Barrie & Jenkins Ltd., London, 1984, p. 175 ).

This collection of over 300 paintings, drawings and sculptures included masterpieces such as Sir John Everett Millais' Sir Isumbras at the Ford (exhibited, Royal Academy, 1857, no. 283), Frederic, Lord Leighton's The Daphnephoria (exhibited, Royal Academy, 1876, no. 241) and The Garden of the Hesperides (exhibited, Royal Academy, 1892, no. 204), now all in the collection of the Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight, Wirral, Merseyside, Herbert James Draper's The Lament for Icarus (exhibited, Royal Academy, 1898, no. 903) now in the collection of the Tate Gallery, Millbank, London, Jules Bastien-Lepage's Pas Meche, now in the collection of the National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh and Pauvre Fauvette, now in the collection of Glasgow Museum and Art Gallery and John William Waterhouse's Ophelia (exhibited, New Gallery, 1894, no. 173 and Royal Academy, "The McCulloch Collection", 1909, no. 122, sold Christies 11th. June, 1993, lot 110, £380,000 ), St. Cecilia (exhibited, Royal Academy, 1895, no. 97) and Flora and the Zephyrs (exhibited, Royal Academy, 1898, no. 64).

The McCulloch collection took three days to sell at Christies, on the 23rd, 29th. and 30th. May, 1913.