Mr. William Strutt has the honour to invite [Horace H. Cauty RBA] & friend to a private view of his important and novel picture entitled “Stocks closed firm, with an upward tendency.” now exhibiting at Mr. J. P. Mendoza’s St. James Gallery 4a King Street St. James Square, SW. [10 to 6 daily]

[London, 1889]. Lithograph printed invitation on buff card, 130 x 200 mm, with name of invitee and gallery hours in ms.; illustrated with a detail from Strutt’s painting; verso blank; in fine condition.

British artist William Strutt (1825-1915) spent twelve years in Australia and New Zealand from 1850 to 1862, leaving an important artistic legacy that includes such major historical paintings as his portrait of Robert O’Hara Burke (1860) (National Library of Australia collection), Black Thursday, February 6th. 1851 (1864) (State Library of Victoria collection), Bushrangers, Victoria, Australia, 1852 (1887) (University of Melbourne collection), and View of Mt Egmont, Taranaki, New Zealand, taken from New Plymouth, with Maoris driving off settlers’ cattle (1861) (Museum of New Zealand / Te Papa Tongarewa).

On his return to England, Strutt concentrated on supplying the lucrative genre paintings market, and created numerous satirical works in the eighteenth-century style. One such painting was the darkly humorous Stocks Closed Firmly with an Upward Tendency (1889), which is now in the collection of the Kirklees Metropolitan Council, Yorkshire.

This invitation to ‘a private view’ of Stocks Closed Firmly is addressed to Strutt’s fellow artist Horace Henry Cauty RBA (1846-1909), himself a painter of genre and historical subjects. The invitation card is quite possibly a unique survivor.