The quotations at the head of each section are taken from Graves' list of Royal Academy exhibitors, and represent the inspiration for the painting, as submitted to the Academy's catalogue by Eyre Crowe.

Title: The Poultry Yard (1900)

Medium: oil

Size: 40 x 60 inches

Exhibited: Royal Academy, 1900

Reproduced in Royal Academy Pictures, 1900, p. 91

This picture shows a scene at a chateau owned by Madame Achille Adam at Outreau near Boulogne, and was begun by Crowe in the late summer of 1899.

Under the title 'Feeding the Chickens', it was offered for sale at Sotheby's on 6 October 1992, reaching £760. It was offered for sale again at Christie's in South Kensington, London, on 9 March 2005 (lot 274), at an estimate of £1,200 - £1,800, but was not sold. A colour reproduction of the picture appeared in the sale catalogue. It was sold again on 21 September 2005 (lot 189) by Dreweatt Neate auctioneers, at the Donnington Priory Salerooms, Newbury, Berkshire, where it was sold for £800.

Title: Le Chapeau de Paille (1900)

Medium: oil

Exhibited: Royal Academy, 1900

This picture was not reproduced in Royal Academy Pictures, and nothing is known of whether it was ever sold.

Title: The Doles of Montreuil (1901)

Medium: oil

Size: 39 x 59 inches

Exhibited: Royal Academy, 1901

Reproduced in Royal Academy Pictures, 1901, p. 139

  ------------------

This painting was one of those remaining in Eyre Crowe's possession at his death, and was sold for £7 7s at an auction of his remaining works at Christie's in London on 18 March 1911.

Title: Sir James Thomas Knowles (1901)

Medium: pen and ink sketch

Size: 7 x 4½ inches (18 x 11½ cm)

Current Owner: Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut (B1978.43.1821)

------------------

This sketch portrait was acquired by Paul Mellon and given to the Yale Center for British Art in 1978.

Title: Napoleon's Abdication, April 5, 1814 (1902)

Medium: oil

Size: 39 x 59 inches

Exhibited: Royal Academy, 1902

Reproduced in Royal Academy Pictures, 1902,  p. 134

The Builder, 10 May 1902 (transcribed in Eyre Crowe's diary of that date):

'Napoleon's Abdication' ... is we should think about the worst Napoleon picture ever painted; there is not even the slightest suggestion of Napoleon in the figure, which, according to the subject of the picture, must be intended for him: it might be labelled 'Puzzle: To find Napoleon.

This, according to Crowe, was 'sound criticism!', but also ignorance, as 'the description in the Catalogue re-iterates what most readers know, that Napoleon never left Fontainebleau but was represented by his Marshals on this occasion'.

------------------

Work on this subject had begun in 1898. Crowe's half-sister Eyrielle Crowe obtained permission to sketch the 'Talleyrand room' in the Rue St Florentin in Paris and sent Crowe a packet of drawings which arrived in January 1899. Crowe worked hard on the picture in the early part of 1899, hoping to send it to the Royal Academy that year. His friend H.A. Bowler, Professor of Perspective at the Royal Academy, worked on the lines of the octagonal room, which proved too tricky for Crowe, in February 1899, but Crowe was forced to abandon the picture as too unfinished in April. He began work on it again in late 1901 or early 1902.

This painting was one of those remaining in Eyre Crowe's possession at his death, and was sold for £14 14s at an auction of his remaining works at Christie's in London on 18 March 1911.

Title: The Concertina Player of Trafalgar Square (1902)

Medium: oil

Size: 10 x 14 inches

Exhibited: Royal Academy, 1902

Reproduced in Royal Academy Pictures, 1902, p. 107 

Crowe worked on this picture periodically from October 1894. It depicts Jacob Oxford, a dwarf who used to squat in Trafalgar Square 'some years back'.

Copyright (c) 2005 Kathryn J. Summerwill. All rights reserved.