Quicksilver Royal Mail and The Blenheim

James Pollard 1792-1867, was an English painter and watercolourist. Pollard was born in North London he was the son of a painter and publisher. He exhibited at the Royal Academy, Suffolk Street Galleries and the British Institution, he established himself as a painter of coaching , fox hunting, shooting, fishing and horse racing scenes, some of which he worked with Frederick Herring senior. His fame for his coaching scenes grew from his observation of coaches passing through his residential area, he lived in North London in Islington, where the coaches would stop for refreshments and carry on to pass through to Birmingham and areas to the North, this was a regular occurrence on the Highgate Road. In 1821 Pollard was commissioned by the Kings Print seller to paint a Coaching Inn signboard showing a mail coach with horses and passengers. This was displayed in a shop window which led to a great deal of commissions for many of the same and it launched his career to further the sale of affordable prints of Coaching scenes and all the other subjects, and then, as now were very popular in the 19th Century with the middle and lower classes. These prints, 2 in the lot here, are hand coloured with watercolour the prints are early to mid 19th Century, they are framed in later oak frames. The 2 prints are Quicksilver Royal Mail and The Blenheim leaving the Star Hotel Oxford. The condition of the prints are commensurate with their age and could be reframed but we have left them as they are having been on our home wall for the last 45 years.