An Unusual English Painted Panel of a Caged Fighting Cock

Painted panel with applied gilt lattice, within a marbleised frame retaining a Georgian-style swan-neck carrying handle.
England, circa 1900

Height: 32 in. (81.3 cm)
Width: 23 in. (58.4 cm)

An unusual and highly decorative English painted panel depicting a fighting cock confined behind a gilt lattice, the bird rendered in strongly stylised blocks of ochre, black, russet and blue against a dark ground. Suspended above is a painted green cartouche bearing an abbreviated inscription, while the whole is enclosed within a boldly marbleised moulded frame and fitted with a swan-neck carrying handle.

The composition is particularly striking for the way in which the lattice forms part of the image rather than merely framing it. Its diagonal bars pass directly across the painted bird, creating the convincing impression of a gamecock viewed through the front of a cage or travelling coop. The result has something of the character of an inn sign, sporting trophy and decorative panel combined.

Portraits of fighting cocks formed a recognisable strand of British sporting art from the eighteenth century onwards. Birds were frequently recorded individually, much as racehorses or prize livestock were, and paintings by artists including Francis Sartorius and Robert Hodgson document the importance once attached to celebrated gamecocks. The Government Art Collection, for example, retains both Sartorius's The Trimmed Cock and Hodgson's Old Trodgon, the latter described in an earlier collection catalogue as a noted prize-winning fighting cock of the 1780s. Art Collection

The present work, however, is quite different from those more conventional sporting portraits. Rather than placing the bird in a landscape, it deliberately emphasises confinement and display. This may indicate that the panel was conceived as a decorative representation of a gamecock in its travelling or holding cage, possibly for a sporting interior, public house, club or private collection. The applied lattice and carrying handle give the object an almost trompe-l'œil quality and make it considerably more intriguing than a straightforward late Victorian animal painting.

The cock itself is treated in a deliberately naïve and graphic manner. Its exaggerated breast, arched neck and sharply delineated plumage give it the presence of a heraldic bird, while the subdued painted ground allows the brilliant reds and yellows of the head and breast to dominate the composition. Comparable late nineteenth-century English naïve paintings of fighting cocks survive, including an example dated 1898, demonstrating the continued popularity of the subject into the closing years of the century. Antiques Atlas

The frame, painted in imitation of veined marble and retaining its metal swan-neck handle. The handle appears deliberately archaic in character, recalling eighteenth-century Georgian furniture and carrying fittings.