The Mail Coach, on His Majesty’s Birthday 1825 by James Pollard – £12,000 at John Nicholson’s.
Distinctly patriotic in nature, stage and mail coach depictions started c.1815, reaching peak popularity in the later 1820s with the artist James Pollard (1792-1867).
On October 3, Haslemere saleroom John Nicholson’s (24% buyer’s premium) offered this 20in x 2ft 6in (51 x 76cm) oil on canvas by Pollard titled The Mail Coach on His Majesty’s Birthday 1825. It shows a Royal Mail coach decorated in ‘hammer-cloth, rosettes and nosegays’ and illuminated to the side of the coach with a large ‘GR’ for George IV.