Nice Donkey, Sir?
Born at Holderness Road, Hull, to a Quaker family, Joseph Walter West was educated at Bootham School in York, where he studied art under Edwin Moore (1813-1893). Following seven years of working as a cashier in an Engineering works in Hull, he went to London in 1883 and studied at the Royal Academy Schools, where he won a silver medal in1887. West became a widely respected artist for his varied talents, ranging from landscape, genre and figurative painting to design work for book plates and posters. He worked in a variety of media including oil and watercolour, and the Ferens owns several examples of both these techniques. As Vice President of the Royal Watercolour Society, West was a regular exhibitor both there and at the Royal Academy. He was a close friend of the artist Bertram Priestman (1868-1951; also represented in the Ferens' collection) and was patronised by T.R. Ferens, principal benefactor of the Gallery. The acecdotal quality of the subject matter of this painting is typical of the artist's approach. It is, however, much more direct and colourful than any other work by this artist, and shows a move from the high-finish realism of Victorian painting to a looser, freer, more `modern' approach.
