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THE BLOG AT THE CROSSROADS
Ally Sloper in British Folk Art at Tate Britain
Posted: June 15, 2014
The Bellamy Quilt (1890-1)
Click detail to see the whole.
Are comics art? Are comics folk art? Either way, the hugely popular Victorian comic character Ally Sloper features in Tate Britain’s fascinating British Folk Art exhibition (on till August 31st) in a humorous snowball assault which is at the centre of the Bellamy Quilt (1890-1) by Herbert Bellamy and Charlotte Alice Springall, borrowed from Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery. Only one erratum: in the accompanying catalogue Sloper is credited as first appearing in 1884. That is the year his weekly, Ally Sloper’s Half-Holiday, was launched, but he’d actually debuted in 1867 in the magazine Judy. Ally Sloper also features, by the way, in Comics Unmasked at The British Library till August 19th, both in printed form and in a rare surviving ventriloquist’s dummy (below, kindly lent by Sloper researcher Roger Sabin). It’s good that the old rascal is being remembered in these two very British exhibits.
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