James Sant, Courage, Anxiety and Despair During the Battle

I found this charming painting on one of my new favorite web sites, a French art blog called Le Prince Lointain. The great virtue of this site is that it posts lots of paintings, sculptures, and poems from the nineteenth century, many of them from second- or third-rank artists I know nothing about. So while much of the material is humdrum, some is surprisingly wonderful. Consider James Sant (1820-1916), an English painter who exhibited his first painting at the Academy in 1840 and his last in 1914. Over the course of this immensely long career he painted many forgettable paintings, but, it seems, at least a few much worth seeing. And I never heard of him until today. Doing a bit of web searching I discovered that he supported himself mainly doing portraits of rich people's children. Below is one example, Lord Almeric Athelstan Spencer-Churchill and Lady Clementina Spencer-Churchill, 1876. (Why didn't I name one of my sons Almeric Athelstan?)