A delightful pair of farm animal paintings featuring chickens and other animals by Claude Cardon. The first painting depicts three hens and a cockerel outside a brick barn. In the foreground, three ducklings can be seen at a feeding bowl as the cockerel watches on. The second work shows two hens and a cockerel outside a wooden barn. As a terrier approaches a feeding bowl behind them the chickens make their exit.

Claude Lorraine Clark known as Claude Cardon was born in 1864 to the landscape artist Samuel James Clark (1841-1928) and his wife Maria Thornton. He was born into the Clark family of artists; his grandfather was James Clark (1812-1884), a well-known animal painter and his uncles were Albert Clark (1843-1928), Octavius Thomas Clark (1850-1921) and James Albert Clark (1863-1955). His brother Ernest Victor Clark (1867-1931) and cousins Frederick Albert Clark (1869-1954) and William Albert Clark (1880-1963) also became artists. The family lived in Islington and Claude was taught to paint by his father, who also taught him to play the violin. Like other members of his family, he painted animals, specialising in rural farm scenes often depicting calves, chickens, pigs and sheep.

In 1888, he married Lottie Maud Whetstone and together they lived at 10 Witherington Road in Islington. By 1892, he had started using the pseudonym of Claude Cardon, presumably to distinguish himself between other members of his artistic family and in the same year made his debut at the Royal Academy under this name. He began exhibiting at the Royal Society of British Artists in 1893 and went on to exhibit at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool and the Manchester City Art Gallery.

He moved to Camden in the St Pancras area of London in 1895, where he worked out of a studio. He lived there with his family until around 1911, when he settled in Whitstable, Kent, living at 12 Cromwell Road. However, he continued to keep a studio in Camden until around 1924. Cardon spent his final years living at 79 Canterbury Road, Whitstable, where he died on 20 January, 1937. Examples of his work can be found at the Nuneaton Museum & Art Gallery.

© Benton Fine Art