Samuel Henry Alken

Samuel Henry Alken, also recorded as Samuel Henry Gordon Alken and known in the trade as Henry Alken Jnr or Henry Samuel Alken Jnr, was born in 1810 in Ipswich, Suffolk, a son of the sporting painter Henry Thomas Alken Sr. (1785 to 1851) and his wife Maria Gordon (sources differ on whether he was the eldest or a younger son). The family returned to London, where Samuel Henry trained informally in his father's studio, working as an etcher and as a painter in watercolour and oil rather than attending a school or academy.

He built a career in London painting foxhunting, racing, and coaching scenes, often in sets, and several prints were published after his work, including The Last Steeplechase Held at the Hippodrome Racecourse, Kensington. A panorama of the funeral procession of the Duke of Wellington (1852) is attributed to him on at least one auction market listing, though details of its production and display are not confirmed in the sources reviewed. No Royal Academy or institutional exhibition record for him has been located in the sources consulted for this profile.

Alken's later life is only thinly documented. He was recorded living in Shadwell, London, in 1881, and according to Richard Green gallery he died in the Poplar workhouse in 1894. Multiple reference sources, including the Getty Union List of Artist Names, agree on the year and general location of his death, though none available gives an exact day or month.

No signed critical essays or named-critic commentary on Samuel Henry Alken in a major outlet have been located. What survives is largely descriptive, gallery-written biography rather than published criticism. Dealers who handle his work, including Richard Green and MacConnal-Mason, describe him as a painter of foxhunting, racing, and coaching scenes whose pictures are sometimes noted as more colorful and detailed than his father's, working in a family tradition that runs from his grandfather, Samuel Alken Sr. (1756 to 1815), through his father to himself. No awards, honors, or major exhibition venues have been documented for him in the sources reviewed.

Alken's clearest documented auction result is a set of four British steeplechase paintings that hammered for USD 60,500 as the top lot in a 2007 sale reported by The Newtown Bee; the specific auction house, location, and exact sale date are not confirmed in the sources reviewed. No higher, reliably sourced result for Samuel Henry Alken specifically has been located since that sale.

Collectors should be careful with any headline figure attached to the surname "Alken" alone. Auction records reaching into six figures, including a reported GBP 110,400 result, belong to his father, Henry Thomas Alken Sr., not to Samuel Henry Alken. Smaller results explicitly tied to Samuel Henry Alken appear on at least one art market aggregator, including USD 3,000 for The 17th Lancers and GBP 8,750 for a pair of Derby Stakes works, both below the 2007 figure and lacking confirmed exact sale dates.

Because no catalogue raisonne exists, attribution depends on dealer and auction house expertise, and buyers should expect works to be catalogued under several name forms, Samuel Henry Alken, Samuel Henry Gordon Alken, Henry Samuel Alken Jnr, and simply Henry Alken. The market itself is thin: the best documented sale is a 2007 set of four paintings reported by trade press, and public sales attributed to him are far less frequent and far lower in value than those reaching his father's market. Any research into pricing should confirm which generation of Alken a given work or auction result actually refers to before drawing conclusions.