One of the most arresting pictures to go under the hammer at Bonhams’ New Bond Street salerooms on 14 June 2006 has got to be the Portrait of Constable Horace Hood. An ordinary “Bobby on the beat” in the London suburb of Notting Hill Gate, Hood was painted by Arthur John Trevor Briscoe in 1933 and his portrait is expected to fetch £15,000-20,000 in the Sale of 19th Century Paintings.
The British artist Arthur Briscoe (1873-1943) normally painted maritime scenes rather than people and Bonhams’ Director of 19th Century Paintings, Alistair Laird, says he has never seen anything like this picture at auction before. He comments: “In all the 24 years I have worked in the auction world, I cannot remember seeing a painting of a policeman before; it is an extremely rare subject.“
Constable Hood was attached to the Notting Hill police station at Ladbroke Grove when Briscoe spotted him. He had noticed that the Royal Academy often exhibited works of art featuring other public service members but never a policeman, so charged himself with righting the situation. On 7 April 1933, Briscoe told the Evening Standard: “I have noticed that at the Academy firemen, sailors and soldiers, dancers, cowboys and all the rest have been painted – but never a London policeman.
”I looked around in the London streets for the policeman who seemed to my mind to be symbolic of all the qualities which make up our ‘Bobby’, and I found such a man on duty in Notting Hill…. It will just be the picture of a policeman standing at the edge of the pavement, his kindly eye on all the world.”
The signed and dated oil on canvas, measuring 101.6 x 76.2 cm. (40 x 30 in.), will be sold on behalf of the policeman’s family, who has a letter from Hood to his Inspector, dated 19 March 1933, requesting permission from the Commissioner of Police to sit for this portrait and that he would be ‘quite willing to attend the studio of Mr. Briscoe in my own time should the concession be granted.’
In 1933 Briscoe was living at 9, Lansdowne House, Holland Park, very close to Notting Hill Gate police station at Ladbroke Grove where Horace Hood was based.
P.C.408F, Horace Hood (warrant no. 104626) was born in Cosham, Hampshire on the 27 September 1888 and worked as a groom before joining F division of the Metropolitan Police on the 28 December 1914. In 1916, he received a commendation for stopping a runaway horse, together with a reward of five shillings. Such was the huge number of horses in the capital at this period that Metropolitan Police officers were taught how to stop runaway horses as part of their training.
He served in the army for nine months from 20 May 1918 to 17 January 1919, it is believed in the Coldstream Guards. As a police officer would have been a reserved occupation during World War One, it is probable that he was selected to play a part in the post-war occupation of Germany at the end of hostilities. It has been suggested that the unusual three-one-three conformation of the buttons on his uniform is the same as the buttons on the jackets of the soldiers of the Coldstream Guards and P.C. Hood was allowed to carry this over on to his police uniform when he returned to work for the Met.
His decision to join the police force was presumably influenced by his father, Robin Hood, having been a Chief Constable in Bournemouth.
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