lfred Sacheverel Coke was born on 27 August 1846 at Brimington Hall, a Tudor house now sadly demolished, near Chesterfield, and baptised in the parish church on 23 September that year. He was married at All Saints Margaret Street on 9 November 1875 to Amy Brunton, the daughter of a stockbroker from Tavistock Square, when he gave his address as 22 Margaret St., and his occupation as artist. The church had been rebuilt under William Butterfield in the 1850s and was at the forefront of Tractarian movement. The Vicar had established the Sisters of All Saints Society of the Poor which Maria Rosetti, Dante Gabriel's sister, soon joined. His real address was 5 The Mall, Haverstock Hill, and he had already established himself as part of the Aesthetic movement led by Edward Burne-Jones, Simeon Solomon, Rossetti and others. The Westminster Review in 1869 admired their work but not their technique, dubbing them the "Poetry-without-Grammar School. Other critics were harsher. Initially he exhibited at the Dudley Gallery which promoted watercolours rather than oils, but later he showed at the Royal Academy.
Few of his paintings survive, the earliest maybe a small oil on panel King Edward and Eleanor (1863), a water colour Eros & Ganymede (1869) at the V&A, then oils on canvas Our Lady Mary & Child (1870), Peacocks (1874), Daughter of Herodias (exhibited at RA 1881), St Martin of Tours (exhibited at RA 1887, maybe lost). The first three of these oils are all about 80" by 30", Peacockshorizontal and the other two vertical.
Walter Crane wrote of Coke, "Another comrade was A. Sacheverell Coke, whom in the opinion of one literary man, at least, as confided to me, was 'the best of us' as an artist. He had much facility of design, and sought his subjects in classical mythology, mostly derived rather from the point of view of the early Venetian school as to treatment and colour" (88). Three of his known pictures are however of biblical figures and saints, though his Daughter of Herodias would hardly find a church wall available for its display. His Lady Mary tunnels right back to the Northern Renaissance, rather than "the noble works of the master minds of Italy" (Redgrave 81): for example, like four of Memling's Virgins and one of Eyck's, Mary is shown here in a blue dress with a red cloak. The setting too has echoes of these works. Unfortunately, as Sarah Reynolds says, Coke's work is now "extremely rare."
Coke and his wife Amy had one daughter, Phyllis, who was born in 1878 and died in 1963. He died at Weymouth on 23 April 1924.
Bibliography
"Alfred Sacheverell Coke: Peacocks." Catalogue Note. Sotheby's. Web. https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2023/european-british-paintings/peacocks.
Ancestry.co.uk.
Crane, Walter. An Artist's Reminiscences. London: Methuen,, 1907. Internet Archive. Web. 7 June 2025.
Redgrave, Richard, and Samuel Redgrave. A Century of Painters of the British School. London: Phaidon, 1947.
Reynolds, Sarah. "Alfred Sacheverell Coke (fl. 1869-1892)." painting">Peacocks (Lot Essay). Christie's. Web. 7 June 2025. https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-6218043.
Created 6 June 2025