The Night Team

Location

Country: UK
City: London
Place: Government Art Collection

During the night a stage coach pulled by four horses has stopped at a station. Here, the station team change the horses and a man dressed in livery holds a lamp into the dark interior of the carriage. Above, the luggage is covered by a tarpaulin and two seated men in top hats (the driver and probably a guard) are well wrapped against the cold night air.

This aquatint print is plate VI of a series of prints known as 'Fores's Coaching Recollections'. The series was first published as a set of five between 1842 and 1846. However, this print dates from 1883, when the series was republished with this additional plate.

Equestrian painter Charles Cooper Henderson was born at the Abbey House, Chertsey, in Surrey; the younger son of amateur artist John Henderson and his wife, Georgian, daughter of author and painter George Keate. Educated at Winchester College, Charles qualified for the bar but did not practise. He also took art lessons from Samuel Prout and became a prolific artist, specialising in hunting and coaching subjects, many of which were published by Messrs Fores of Piccadilly and Rudolph Ackermann. Some were etched by Henderson himself. He sent coaching scenes to the Royal Academy exhibitions in 1840 and 1848. After his mother's death in 1850, he became financially independent. He died at his home at Lower Halliford-on-Thames, Middlesex, aged 74.

Places

Subjects

coach, stage coach, lantern, Victorian Genre, night, dog, horse, boy, man, top hat, road, barn, thatched roof

Materials & Techniques

aquatint, coloured aquatint

Artist

Charles Cooper Henderson (1803 - 1877)
Henry A Papprill (1816 - 1903)

Title

The Night Team

Date

published 1 November 1883

Medium

Coloured aquatint

Dimensions

height: 60.70 cm, width: 80.60 cm

Acquisition

Purchased from Bishops of Bideford, February 1954

GAC number

2610