![The Cock-Fight [The Challenge Refused]](9.jpg)
The Cock-Fight [The Challenge Refused], by John Evan Hodgson (1831-1895). 1875. Oil on canvas. 26 x 33 3/4 inches (66 x 85.7 cm). Collection of the National Museum Cardiff, accession no. NMW A 2957. Image reproduced via Art UK for the purpose of non-commercial research. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Hodgson exhibited A Cock-fight at the Royal Academy in 1875, no. 241. Prior to its exhibition at the Royal Academy it appears to have gone by the title Rejected Challenger and at some later point acquired the title The Challenge Refused. It shows a cockfight in Tunis where a boy refuses to send his rooster back into combat against another rooster who has already bettered his pet.
The Architect found the work very poignant: "Much pathos will be found in his Rejected Challenger, which ought to be dedicated to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, for the sorrowing regard and sympathy with which that young Arab withdraws his cock from a first encounter is so full of mingled self-reproach and kindness for his pet that it preaches a powerful sermon in advocacy of those views which that Society by sterner means would inculcate" (107). A reviewer for The Illustrated London News merely commented: "Another characteristic street scene is The Cock-Fight (241), with a boy carrying off his bird, who has had enough, to the great discontent of a party of amateurs, who has settled down to see the sport out" (446).
F. G. Stephens in The Athenaeum felt that Hodgson's art had not much advanced but this was the best of the four pictures he exhibited at the Royal Academy this year:
Mr. Hodgson has not made much of an advance this year. His best picture is A Cock-fight (241). The scene is a street in Tunis lined with half-ruined buildings, and as seen in sunlight and shadow, in an open space in which a circle has been formed about the combatants by the spectators of the fight. This ring has been broken up on the defeat of one of the birds, whose master, a boy, takes up the injured chanticleer, and is loath to trust him again to the chances of war: so he bears the bird off, notwithstanding the remonstrances of the spectators, and especially of a big man in a white burnous, who wears a dagger at his belt, and the challenge of the owner of the victorious cock, as well as that of the bird himself, who, eager to begin again, is chuckling vigorously. The battle-field is strewn with feathers. An old fellow in a green turban has spread his carpet on the ground, probably for the accommodation of the combatants. Several spectators are discussing the fight; there are other idlers about. The vista of the street is capitally painted, in a peculiarly brilliant effect. [660]
The critic of The Spectator deplored the fact that Hodgson was now concentrating his talents on Orientalist subjects: "Mr. Hodgson gives interest by the variety of expression which he puts into his figures in his African scenes, A Barber's Shop in Tunis (141), and A Cock-fight (241). The last-named painter seems to throw himself thoroughly into the life he depicts; but we regard it as a loss that with such power of expression, he should give himself up to the portrayal of a race of people in whom we have comparatively small interest, and employ that power upon a much more limited set of types of features than we see round about us at home" (627).
The same year that Hodgson exhibited his painting of A Cock-fight at the Royal Academy, George John Pinwell exhibited a watercolour entitled The Cock-fight at the Winter Exhibition of the Society of Painters in Water Colours [Old Water Colour Society], no. 422.
Bibliography
"Art. The Royal Academy." The Spectator XLVIII (May 15, 1875): 626-27.
The Challenge Refused. Art UK. Web. 17 January 2024.
"Exhibition of the Royal Academy." The Illustrated London News LXVI (8 May 1875): 445-46.
"Forthcoming Pictures." The Architect XIII (20 February 1875): 107.
Stephens, Frederic George" "Fine Arts. The Royal Academy." The Athenaeum No. 2481 (15 May 1875): 660-61.
Created 17 January 2024