#88 • "Gunners" Hand Tinted Lithograph Print by Charles 'Snaffles' Johnson Payne

Part of TRENCH ART & WWI Memorabilia (live auction by Bannerman Auctions)

High bid $120.00

Status: Sold

Category: Britain

"Gunners" Hand Tinted Lithograph Print by Charles 'Snaffles' Johnson Payne. 38cm x 62cm overall dimensions; features 20cm x 46cm print mounted onto printed remarque board.  Print depicts Royal Artillerymen wearing overcoats and 'Gor Blimey' caps, tending a six up hitch of draft horses; two of the gunners remain mounted, smoking their pipes while a third checks a hoof.  Remarque depicts a team and it's gun driving past a horse that has become a casualty, with the quote from Kipling "There lay the driver's brother / with 'is 'ead between 'is 'eels".  Remarque board has embossed snaffle bit logo of the artist above the lower right corner illustration. Snaffles was deemed too young to go to the South African War but in 1902, at the age of 18, he enlisted as a gunner in the Royal Garrison Artillery where, after lights-out, he used to read Kipling to his mates by candlelight in the barrack room. In the following years he developed his brilliant artistic skills and was able to leave the Army. By the time the First World War broke out, he was a frequent contributor to periodicals, such as the Sporting and Dramatic, in the days before photography had become general. In the early part of the war, as an artist for The Graphic, he sketched many scenes from the front in France before entering the Royal Naval Air Service as a rating Motor Mechanic in small coastal motorboats. Later he was commissioned as a Lieutenant RNVR, and joined the team under Norman Wilkinson engaged in designing camouflage for ships at sea, which involved trips in the Northern Patrol. In 1915 he married Lucy Lewin, who was born in Sydney, NSW, the daughter of a West Country owner-skipper of a trading brig whose wife, as was often the custom in those days, accompanied him; the ship happened to be in Sydney at the time. His artistic career continued between the wars, covering the sporting scene in England, Ireland and, particularly, in India. Apart from the sale of his sporting prints, he contributed to many magazines including Punch. He and Lucy lived just outside Guildford from 1925 until early in World War II. He helped with the camouflage of airfields, gasometers etc. and joined the Home Guard. When their house was narrowly missed by a stick of bombs, they moved first to Somerset, then to Devon and eventually to Orcheston in Wiltshire, before buying Orchard Cottage, Hindon Lane, Tisbury, Wiltshire just after the war. His work was part of the painting event in the art competition at the 1932 Summer Olympics.  Snaffles had a studio behind the house and although his most prolific painting days had passed, he still continued to sketch and turned his hand to producing a series of well-received books and also Christmas cards for his friends. Snaffles died in 1967, Lucy in 1980. They are both buried in Fonthill Gifford churchyard. Estimate: $200 - $400