Overall: 51cm (24in) x 69cm (27.2in)
Hand coloured lithograph heightened with body colour. A gunner officer and Royal Artillery mounted gun team on the march in interwar India, with bye-line title taken from Kipling’s Boer War poem ‘Ubique’ which refers to the many horses drafted by the Field Artillery that had previously been used to draw London buses. By way of a joke, other soldiers would greet the Field Artillery on the march with the cries of London bus conductors. Stamped in the remarque with Snaffles’ trademark blind stamp of two interlocking snaffle bits. Signed to the border lower right in pencil. Framed and glazed.
Charlie Johnson Payne (1884-1967), ‘Snaffles’, was the son of a Warwickshire boot maker turned publican. As a boy ‘Snaffles’ was an avid consumer of Kipling and was fascinated by the yarns of a great uncle who had served in the Crimea. After working as a wine merchant’s clerk and joining a volunteer battalion of the Oxfordshire Light Infantry, he enlisted in the Royal Garrison Artillery in 1902 serving as a Gunner until 1905. After lights-out, he used to read Kipling to his mates by candlelight in the barrack room. In the following years he developed his characteristic artistic style and a deepening interest in hunting, racing and polo. He became a regular contributor to periodicals, such as Bystander and the Sporting and Dramatic. Days spent in the hunting field with the Cottesmore provided ample inspiration for his much loved sporting scenes.
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Following the outbreak of War in 1914, he went to France as a freelance journalistic artist - his work appearing in The Graphic and The Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News.
He married his wife Lucy in 1915, who through her financial management was responsible for much of his subsequent commercial success. He served in the Royal Naval Air Service as a rating Motor Mechanic in small coastal motorboats. Later he was commissioned Lieutenant RNVR, and joined the team that developed dazzle camouflage with the Northern Patrol. In 1920 he was made a Chevalier of the Belgian Order of the Crown.
With Lucy and a lifelong friend, Major Taffy Walwyn, DSO, MC, RA, Snaffles travelled India in 1927 and again in 1934/35, and drew upon his experiences there to produce his popular polo and pig-sticking images. His work covering the equestrian life in England, Ireland and in the military in India was made extremely popular through the publication of prints that were initially hand coloured and later photographically printed over a fifty year period. Apart from the sale of his sporting prints, he contributed to many magazines and publications. During the Second World War he served in the Home Guard, and undertook camouflage work disguising airfields, gasometers and other installations.