Original works of art
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Sydenham Teast Edwards |
(English, 1768 -1819 ) |
While Sydenham Edwards did not specialize in dogs, he is very important as a chronicler of early breeds. Born at Usk, Monmouth, Edwards was a distinguished painter of flowers and animals, illustrating many important books. Among his works exhibited at the Royal Academy were the dog subjects A Cocker Spaniel, Stag hounds in a Kennel and the portrait, Hunter with Hounds being Un-Kenneled.
Edwards published Cynographia Britannica between 1800 and 1805, a volume which illustrates some the earliest depictions of certain breeds. They were originally painted by Edwards as watercolors, then reproduced as hand colored plates, in installments for Cynographia Britanica, a book which was never actually finished. Executed some seventy years before the founding of The Kennel Club, these images are very important, for we can see what the predecessors of each or our modern-day breeds looked like. The Bulldog, for instance, has developed a larger head then in the watercolor by Edwards, and it has shorter legs, characteristics which would later be more exaggerated by late nineteenth and early twentieth century breeders.
Edwards showed at the RA between 1792 and 1813 and. He published British Flowers in 1812 and a botanical register in 1815. |