Fishing - Trout, Salmon, etc

Of all the field sports, fly fishing has the richest tradition of associated literature and art. From Izaak Walton’s The Compleat Angler (1653) — still in print, still read, still treasured — to the elaborate illustrated angling manuals of the Victorian era, fishing has attracted writers, artists and illustrators of real distinction, and the prints they produced form one of the most coherent and appealing areas of sporting art. The antique fishing prints in this collection reflect that tradition, offering material that appeals to anglers, to collectors of sporting art, and to anyone drawn to the particular combination of natural observation and leisured contemplation that fishing illustration at its best embodies.

The eighteenth century established many of the conventions of sporting fish illustration. The fish portrait — a single specimen depicted against a plain background or a schematic representation of its habitat — became the dominant mode for scientific illustration and was adapted by sporting artists to produce images that combined accurate depiction of the quarry species with a compositional elegance suited to the drawing room. The finest examples from this period reflect both the growing interest in natural history as a gentleman’s pursuit and the technical accomplishment of engravers working at the peak of the line-engraving tradition.

The nineteenth century saw sporting illustration flourish as never before. The growth of the illustrated periodical press created an enormous market for images of field sports, and artists who specialised in fishing, shooting and other country pursuits found ready employment. The salmon rivers of Scotland and Ireland, the chalk streams of Hampshire and Wiltshire, the mountain torrents of Wales and the Lake District — all became subjects of illustration as the railway opened up previously inaccessible fishing waters to the growing middle class. These images document not just the sport but the landscape and social world in which it was practised.

Fly fishing illustration developed its own specific conventions: the angler waist-deep in a river, rod curved under the weight of a running fish; the bankside scene with rod, creel and the day’s catch laid out for inspection; the close study of artificial flies tied with the ingenuity and craft that serious anglers have always admired. The best fishing artists — of whom there were many in Britain and America through the Victorian and Edwardian periods — combined accurate observation of the fish and its habitat with a feel for the specific pleasures of the sport that gives their work an insider quality recognisable to any angler.

Trout and salmon dominate the tradition for obvious reasons: they are the most prized quarry of the fly fisher, demanding both skill and patience to take, and associated with rivers and landscapes of particular beauty. But the broader angling tradition encompassed coarse fishing, sea fishing and the pursuit of species — pike, perch, barbel, bream — that have their own devoted following, and prints depicting these subjects are also represented in this collection.

For the collector who is also an angler, antique fishing prints offer an opportunity to hang the history of the sport in the most appropriate possible setting. For the non-angling collector, they represent some of the most accessible and pleasurable sporting art, connected to a leisured world of rivers, seasons and patience that retains its appeal across generations.