Prowling Tiger

WILLIAM WOODHOUSE

English School 

1857-1937

Prowling Tiger

Oil on canvas laid on board, signed

25 x 35.5 cms

10 x 14 ins

Born at Poulton-le-Sands, which is now called Morecambe, Lancashire, on 1st October 1857, Woodhouse remained a Lancastrian throughout his life, based in Heysham. He was a distinguished animal painter and is recorded as having studied at the Lancaster School of Art and the Nottingham School of Art. There is evidence that his works were used as examples for art students from which to learn. However, Woodhouse was basically self-taught as an animal painter and he frequented the slaughterhouses in order to study anatomy.

Woodhouse first exhibited when he was 24 at the Lancaster Exhibition and he continued to show there until 1927, the Lancashire area being his preferred venues such as Liverpool, Birmingham and Manchester. At the age of 26, he did exhibit in London at the Royal Society of Artists with Doomed, and Wolves and Wild Boar at the Royal Academy in 1889 and 1896

Technically brilliant and interested in textures, Woodhouse had a soft realistic style well suited to the depiction of animals. He worked in oils, watercolours, and gouache, and did paint landscapes and portraits in addition to his preferred sporting subjects. Woodhouse's horses and dogs have an especially tender quality and are painted with great sensitivity.

Four years after Woodhouse's death, Sydney Paviere, Curator of the Harris Museum and Art Gallery in Preston, organised a memorial exhibition of eighty-nine of the artist's works. He was the father of the artist Ronald Basil Emsley Woodhouse.


Bibliography:

The Dictionary of British Equestrian Artists - Sally Mitchell

Dog Painting - William Secord

The Dictionary of British Artists - J Johnson and A Greutzner

The Dictionary of Victorian Painters - Christopher Wood

Dictionary of British Artists Working 1900-1950 - Grant M Waters

Dictionary of British Animal Painters - J. C. Wood