Edwin Alexander

Peacock and Python

1905

Sorry, no image available

Not on display

Artist: Edwin Alexander 1870–1926
Medium: Watercolour on paper
Dimensions: Support: 1018 × 1780 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Presented by the Trustees of the Chantrey Bequest 1905
Reference: N01965

Catalogue entry

N01965 PEACOCK AND PYTHON 1905

Inscr. ‘Edwin Alexander 1905’ t.r.
Watercolour on brown paper, 39×69 (99×175).
Chantrey Purchase from the artist 1905.
Exh: R.W.S., June 1905 (115).
Lit: James Paterson, ‘Edwin Alexander, R.S.A., R.W.S., R.S.W.’ in The Old Water-Colour Society's Club, IV, 1927, pp.57, 62.
Repr: Art Journal, 1905, p.192.

After his marriage in 1904 the artist settled at Inveresk, where he installed a menagerie in the outhouses and stables and kept various birds and animals, including, for some months, a nine-foot python, which probably inspired this composition.

A similar composition, but of a dead peacock only, was reproduced in the Studio, LXVI, 1915, p.208, entitled ‘Mor’.

Published in:
Mary Chamot, Dennis Farr and Martin Butlin, The Modern British Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, London 1964, I