Man on Edge of Seat (Study for 'Commotion in the Cattle Ring'), c. 1935

James Bateman RA (1893 - 1959)

RA Collection: Art

A detailed pencil, white gouache and grey wash full-length study of a sitting man viewed from the front right leaning forward with his hands on a bench as though about to stand up. He is wearing a jacket, trousers, flatcap and a pair of round spectacles and has a pipe in his mouth. The study is executed mainly in pencil, with some additional white gouache highlighting; the drawing as a whole has a grey wash over it.

This is a preparatory study for James Bateman's Commotion in the Cattle Ring (Tate N04834). The study relates to a man seated in the stands to the left of the finished painting who is wearing a white jacket and shirt, black trousers and flatcap, and spectacles, with a pipe in his mouth.

The artist's widow wrote to the Tate Gallery on 9 September 1959 about this painting: 'The original idea was just a sale-ring. But one day my husband saw a bull escape with its lead and the dealers scramble for safety.'

The work was painted in the cattle ring at Banbury, Oxfordshire (see Tate catalogue entry). The Cattle Market was held on Merton Street in Grimsbury at the eastern end of Banbury from 1925 until its closure in 1998. Midland Marts Ltd organised auction sales there, which is most likely what is depicted in Bateman's painting.

The study is one of 47 preparatory drawings for Commotion in the Cattle Ring that are in the Royal Academy's collection. These preparatory drawings as well as studies for Cattle Market (Tate N04958) and Pastoral (Tate N04471) were given to the Royal Academy by the artist's family in 1977.

James Bateman RA was a painter and wood engraver of pastoral and farmyard scenes. He was born in 1893 in Kendal, Cumbria. He studied sculpture at Leeds School of Art (1910-14) and won a scholarship to the Royal College of Art. Following serious injury in the First World War, Bateman turned from sculpture to painting and trained at the Slade School of Fine Art (1919-21). He taught at Cheltenham School of Art (1922-28) and Hammersmith School of Art and designed camouflage in the Second World War. He died in London in 1959.

Bateman first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1924. His paintings Pastoral (1928), Commotion in the Cattle Ring (1935) and Cattle Market (1937) were purchased by the Chantrey Bequest for the Tate Gallery. Bateman was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy in 1935 and a Member in 1942.