George Paice (painter)


George Thomas Paice was a British landscape, canine, hunting, and equestrian painter.
Born in Pimlico, London, Paice studied at the Heatherley School of Fine Art and at the Royal Academy from 1905-1910. He worked mostly for private collectors, his paintings almost never present at public exhibitions. Nevertheless, he did exhibit his works at the Royal Academy and at the Royal Society of British Artists, gaining notoriety among the wealthy. He was quickly a much sought-after artist by the English aristocracy, one or two mecenes encouraging his work. Probably for that reason, most of his paintings remained in private collections until two decades ago when some of those works appeared in world known Auction Houses such as Christie's.
After his marriage in 1879, he and his wife, Eunice Mary Stuart, moved to Croydon where Paice painted most of his horses and dogs, although he did paint some point-to-point landscapes, these larger than the usually small format animal portraits he was commissioned to paint. Rarely did he paint people, one of the few exceptions being his own self-portrait. He used various signatures: "P", "GPaice" - P and G superposed -, "G.Paice", "George Paice".
A wealthy artist at the beginning of the 20th century, Paice suffered a great loss of money during World War I due to lack of commissions but continued painting until his death.
Strangely enough, George Paice remains absent from many Art Dictionaries, although his paintings travelled overseas, as referred in The National Sporting Library Newsletter, Spring 2008: "Mrs. Dulaney also contributed an oil painting by British artist George Paice, Hunter in a BoxStall with Docked Tail, in which the handsome bay poses alertly in a spacious box stall, eyeing the viewer".

Works

Death and legacy

Paice died in 1925 aged 71 and was buried in the family grave, in Croydon, his racing colours draped on his coffin. With his animal portraits present in galleries and museums in England and in the United States at the Museum of Modern Art, New York City, Paice's paintings have been sold at Christie's, Sotheby's, and Bonhams.
Father of eight children, one of his sons followed his father's steps and also became a painter, adopting his mother's surname.