Henry Thomas ALKEN
1785–1851, England

Henry Thomas Alken was the best known of the Alken family of sporting artists; he is often referred to as Henry Alken, Sr. to differentiate him from his son, Samuel Henry Alken. Henry Thomas studied with his father, Samuel Alken, Sr., and with the miniaturist J. T. Barber. He amassed considerable knowledge of racing, both on the flat and over the sticks, as well as of shooting, fishing and coursing, all gained from first-hand experiences in the saddle, on the moor and on the fishing beats of the English chalk streams. He began painting sporting subjects for publication as etchings and aquatints under the pseudonym Ben Tally-Ho. His work was particularly notable in that, unlike his predecessors in his field, he would regularly depict the less dignified aspects of the sport of foxhunting - a refusal at a brook, an unseated rider thrown into the water, a city slicker on a runaway, a dandy hand-walking a lame horse in at the day's end or even wild cartoonish charges illustrating horses and riders jumping across rugged country in a comical vein.

He also wrote and published a number of books on horses and drawing, among them The Beauties and Defects in the Figure of the Horse in 1816, The National Field Sports of Great Britain in 1820 and A Treatise on Etching in the late 1820s.

Source: http://www.redfoxfineart.com