Artist: Walter Dendy Sadler (English, 1854 – 1923)
Medium: Antique etching on wove paper after the original by master etcher FREDERICK ALBERT SLOCOMBE. (British, 1847-1920).
Signature: Signed in the plate, lower right.
Dimensions: Image Size 5 3/4 x 10 7/8 inches.
Framed Dimensions: Approximately 15 x 20 inches.
Framing: This piece has been professionally matted and framed using all new materials.
Walter Dendy Sadler specialized in depictions of religious life, often portraying scenes from previous centuries. These religious subjects were not exempt from the light-hearted approach that characterized Sadler’s work, and this monastic banquet, with a Dominican order entertaining a pair of Franciscan friars, is shown in a delightfully amusing style. Traditionally, Friday has been considered a day of fasting in the Christian week, with all meat to be avoided in commemoration of Christ’s crucifixion. The Franciscans, in particular, were renowned for the strictness of the rules imposed in many of their monasteries; yet Sadler here allows himself a gentle dig at the monastic orders, suggesting that, while the monks are keeping to the letter of the law in their feast, the jovial atmosphere of the endeavor is perhaps less sober than might have been intended.
Walter Dendy Sadler was an English painter. Walter Dendy Sadler was born in Dorking, a market town in Surrey in southern England, and brought up in Horsham, West Sussex, England. At age 16 he decided to become a painter and enrolled for two years at Heatherly’s School of Art in London, subsequently studying in Germany under Burfield and Wilhelm Simmler. In 1897 Sadler moved to Hemingford Grey, Huntingdonshire, where he died 13 November 1923, aged 69. He exhibited at the Dudley Gallery from 1872 and at the Royal Academy from the following year through to the 1890s. He was a member of the RBA, he also exhibited at the RA. He painted contemporary people in domestic and daily life pursuits, showing them with comical expressions illustrating their greed, stupidity etc. His subjects were usually set in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth centuries with sentimental, romantic and humorous themes. Before painting a scene he would create elaborate settings in which local villagers would often pose as models. Indeed, as he often used the same props and models, these can sometimes be seen repeated in successive paintings in different guises. The home, the inn, the lawyers office, the garden and the golf course all provide subjects for his wit and clever social observation.