Peacocks

This is a picture of considerable importance in the context of the Aesthetic movement. Coke was a member of a group of young artists who came to the fore in the 1860s and saw themselves as followers of Burne-Jones. They were inspired by the pictures he exhibited at the Old Water-Colour Society, to which he was elected in 1864, but they themselves tended to show at the Dudley Gallery, which opened in the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly, the following year, and became something of a nursery to young exponents of Aestheticism. Like Burne-Jones, himself, they were savagely attacked by the critics, and perceived as having more sentiment than skill; indeed, the Westminster Review dubbed them the 'Poetry without Grammar School' in 1869. In retrospect, their most famous member was Walter Crane (1845-1915), who became such a populariser of Aesthetic values as well as playing a decisive role in the Arts and Crafts movement.
Coke's own talents were rated highly by Crane, who wrote: 'Another comrade was A. Sacheverell Coke, whom in the opinion of one literary man, at least, as confided to me, was "the best of us" as an artist. He had much facility of design, and sought his subjects in classical mythology, mostly derived rather from the point of view of the early Venetian school as to treatment and colour. (An Artist's Reminiscences, London, 1907, p. 88).
Coke exhibited at the Royal Academy between 1881 and 1892, giving as his addresses 5 The Mall, Haverstock Hill, and the Arts Club, Hanover Square. His four R.A. pictures were all literary in theme. Crane also lists him among the members of 'The Fifteen', a group of artists and craftsmen formed at the instigation of Lewis F. Day in 1881, which merged with the Art Workers' Guild three years later. However, Coke was never a member of the Guild itself.
Today Coke's work is extremely rare. The theme of peacocks is of obvious significance in relation to the Aesthetic movement, which made almost as much of a cult of peacock-feathers as it did of sunflowers. Peacocks also appear in Walter Crane's early pictures; 'At the Dudley Gallery', he wrote, 'I continued to have considerable success with my drawings, and one of peacocks on a terrace with a landscape beyond ... was not only purchased, but no less than two replicas were asked for by different people' (op. cit., p. 107).