Tick-Tick or Tick-Tack
Merton Russell-Cotes considered Briton Rivière to be ‘the most distinguished English artist in the portrayal of animals’ and the successor to Edwin Landseer. Merton bought several of Rivière’s works but claimed that ‘perhaps the one that he appreciated most as his own work, although on a small scale… is ‘Tick Tack (sic)’?… It is altogether a most admirable little work in his best style.’
Animals were a popular subject with Briton Rivière. He is quoted as saying in an interview ‘I have always been a great lover of dogs…However you can never paint a dog unless you are fond of it’.
Briton Rivière studied at Cheltenham College where his father, William Rivière, was a drawing master. Briton was educated at Cheltenham College and Oxford, where he took his degree in 1867. For his art training he was indebted almost entirely to his father. His first pictures appeared at the British Institution, and in 1857 he exhibited three works at the Royal Academy, but it was not until 1863 that he became a regular contributor to the Academy exhibitions. In that year he was represented by The eve of the Spanish Armada, and in 1864 by Romeo and Juliet. However, subjects of this kind did not attract him long, for in 1865 he began, with Sleeping Deerhound, a series of paintings of animal-subjects which occupied much of the rest of his life.
