Old Hunting Dog – T. Bailey

T. Bailey was a pseudonym invented by Morris Hambro (1860-1938), a London-born sign-painter and salesman who came to the U.S. in 1865 and began peddling the Bailey paintings after 1910. Numerous marine paintings bearing this signature emerged from Boston and Winthrop, MA, between 1910 -38. The typical work showed a tall ship on the high seas, its sails unfurled. Hambro created the fictive artist and sold the paintings door to door, mostly to businesses, traveling from Boston to Worcester, to New Bedford, to Portland (ME), to Cape Cod, and to Fall River.

Hambro was extremely successful in his endeavor; one gallery in Boston (the Addition Gallery) reportedly bought the paintings “by the dozen.” A number of names have been suggested as the actual painter or painters of the works: Vivian Forsythe Porter, Max Berman (who was married to Hambro’s niece), Sears Thompson, J. G. Cloudman, Mae Bennet Brown, Melbourne C. Hardwick; and, in particular, William Frederick Paskell. It is believed that Hambro bought the works from the artists for $15 to $20, added Bailey’s signature, and then sold the paintings for up to $50 apiece. Whether the artists themselves even knew about Hambro”s strategy is unknown.

This particular original oil on canvas is a unique Bailey as it is not a marine painting.