The Shepherds Amazed

Based on a drawing of 1913-15. The artist recounted, ‘I remember returning home one evening to find a note enclosing a cheque for £100 from Lord Henry Bentinck, who had called to see my painting of the ‘Shepherds Amazed’ and liked it.’ Bentinck gifted it almost immediately to the Contemporary Art Society, who in 1938 presented it to Leeds Art Gallery in a swap with The Seven Ages of Man (1913/4, Art Gallery of Hamilton, Ontario).

Date: c. 1919
Tags: Biblical, Oil Paintings
Medium: Oil on canvas
Height (mm): 1016
Width (mm): 1246
Location: Leeds Museums and Galleries LEEAG.PA.1938.0009.0002
Exhibition History: Probably Cambridge Magazine Art Exhibition, King's Parade, Cambridge, November-December 1919 as 'The Angels Appearing to the Shepherds'; NEAC, 63rd exhibition, winter 1921 (100); British Council, Cairo, 1948; Arts Council, 'Decade', 1920-9, 1970 (139); Reading 1964 (7); FAS 1974 (6)
Provenance: Gifted by Lord Henry Cavendish-Bentinck (1863-1931) to the Contemporary Art Society, 1921; presented to Leeds Art Gallery (as a swap with The Seven Ages of Man, now in Art Gallery, Ontario), 1938
Literature: Cambridge Magazine 13 December 1919, illus.; Fleuron Press, 1926 pl. 3; Rothenstein 1956; Spencer 1974, p. 69; Gough 2024 illus. p. 110