Walter Dendy Sadler (1854-1923)

    Dendy Sadler was born in Dorking, and brought up in Horsham, where he showed a precocious talent for drawing. At age 16 he decided to become a painter and enrolled for two years at Heatherly's School of Art in London, subsequently studying in Germany under W. Simmler. He exhibited at the Dudley Gallery from 1872 and at the Royal Academy from the following year through to the 1890s. He painted contemporary people in domestic and daily life pursuits, showing them with comical expressions illustrating their greed, stupidity etc. Dendy Sadler was best known for his pictures of monks - his reputation was established with a picture of monks fishing called Steady Brother, Steady (1875), and his most well-known paintings are Thursday (Tate Gallery, and incidentally one of the first three pictures in Henry Tate's collection) also showing monks fishing, and Friday (Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool), where they are consuming their catch the next day. The monks are characterised as good natured but foolish looking fellows. The combination of realism with whimsicality follows an English tradition of almost slapstick humour, which seems to work better as black and white illustration in the pages of Punch or in light-hearted articles by artists such as Harry Furniss. Another slightly whimsical picture is End of the Skein at the Lady Lever Art Gallery.