Lot Essay
Stephen Elmer, a painter of game and still life which he executed with a characteristcally strong line and great fidelity to nature, was elected an associate of the Royal Academy in 1772. He died in 1796 at Farnham in Surrey. Many of his works were destroyed by fire on Jerrod Street in Soho in 1801 together with a collection of prints by Woollett. After his death, 148 of his works were exhibited by his son or nephew, the artist William Elmer, as Elmer's Sporting Exhibition, ten were engraved by John Scott for W.B. Daniel's Rural Sports, 1801, and two were published in the Sporting Magazine. Edward Edwards calls Elmer 'a painter of dead game and still life...considered as the superior artist of his time for the representation of those objects, which are familiar to the sportsman, the cook and the bon vivant.' (see J. Egerton, The Paul Mellon Collection British Sporting and Animal Paintings, London, 1978, p. 61.)