I may have answered my questions, if the artist known as Snaffles was also sometimes known as After Snaffles. Descriptions such as "After 'Snaffles' [Charles Johnson Payne] - '1915-16, That Far Far-Away Echo', colour print, signed in pencil, approx 36cm x 45.5cm have had me bamboozled for decades. Why would anyone "pencil-sign" a hand-coloured litho "after" someone? Was he called After Snaffles? Does anyone know? If so, then hope springs afresh that this cheap purchase from a tatty auction house maybe 25 years ago might be genuinely pencil-signed, and not some repro in some After someone style. It seems there are various versions of this print, some including a fox and some with dates, and that Charles Payne signed wherever he felt like it. (I've just noticed that mine has been trimmed to fit the mount -- BUMMER!) Sorry. My pictures are all wrong now and I'll concentrate on signatures. Perhaps this one is genuine after all. Here are some of my print, complete with previous owners' comments, and two I found tonight on Google. P.s. This is the most edited post in history. I am seriously confused. I've seen another that was signed lower right.
A Snaffles signature from Google and the one on mine ... What a shame it's been chopped. It might be the real deal after all. Blutig! I've always assumed "After" was "in the style of" ... A better shot of my one, cut edge visible.
I really don't know what that means. Maybe it was taken in the wrong context. It may just mean that it was colored after the original was lithographed. The signature you would have to check on. Part of the original signing or he signed the lithograph I do not know. I like the prints though. I still wonder how he got the nickname. I know he was an equestrian and the snaffles bit does make sense but did he think it up himself or did someone else give it to him
I generally think of "after" as meaning copied from someone's original work, but in a different medium. So you can have things like engravings and lithographs, which take their own skill sets, copied from things like paintings. If it's a copy done in the same medium, then it's just a copy. I guess it's the difference between taking the credit yourself, or acknowledging that there's an original of the same design by someone else.
"After" is an art term. Numerous definitions can be found on the internet. Generally, it means "in the style of." One can assume the artist was influential and widely copied in his time. Debora
Thanks all. I'd not found "That Far Faraway Echo" on the few occasions I'd looked. It seems a couple have been through auctions more recently. The age of my print looks right and I believe the signatures are the same, so reckon it is a genuine hand-coloured, signed litho now cut down to fit a 50s' frame. Which is sad. His "blind stamp" was two snaffle horse bits, and my print has those. I'd hoped the mount might be hiding more, but alas can see it's been chopped. Anyway, it's an ugly signature and is quite distracting, but I'll leave it there and call it real. The chances are it is, and that a few references to After Snaffles have led me to think otherwise. Nuff said.
