3-008-747 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

"Checkmate - Next Move", by J. C. Horsley, A.R.A., from the exhibition of the Royal Academy, 1862. Engraving of a painting. The great merit of the picture is its very admirable painting of interior perspective and its still more remarkable representation of the effects of sunlight...how pleasantly the certainty of victory is indicated in the action and expression of the lady of the hall in her smile of self-complacency, her rallying look at her absorbed antagonist, her partial withdrawal from the chessboard...Look, too, at the wicked eyes of that pretty party to the plot standing, in the olden fashion, dutifully behind mamma's chair, and, like a well-bred girl as she is, suppressing the involuntary titter with her fan. How are we to apply the apparent double entendre of the title? Will the old gentleman be "mated" as well as "checkmated," for in chess parlance the one is identical with the other?...What is the young gallant - the son, we may suppose, of the older victim - whispering?...The background...is an interior at Haddon Hall...The room here represented is of the time of Henry VII...Mr. Horsley is, we believe, the only painter who has taken important portions of the building literally as backgrounds to elaborate subject pictures'. From "Illustrated London News", 1862.