Original artwork used for the cover of 'The mare with the silver hoof'

This artwork was used as cover art for Robert Allan's 'The mare with the silver hoof', published by the NSW Bookstall Company in Sydney in 1911. It is signed and dated by the artist, Percy Frederick Seaton Spence.

Percy Frederick Seaton Spence was an Australian Federation-era Sydney painter, illustrator and Bulletin cartoonist. He was born in Sydney, but raised in Fiji. In 1888, Spence worked as an illustrator for the Daily Telegraph, Illustrated Sydney News and the Bulletin. Spence travelled to London around 1895, exhibiting as an artist and working as an illustrator. Spence returned to Sydney around 1906, and illustrated for Lone Hand. He also illustrated for books and posters of the NSW Bookstall Company in its 'Art Series'. Spence returned to London around 1910, where he remained until his death in 1933.

The NSW Bookstall Company started as a chain of railway kiosks selling affordable paperbacks to travellers at a time when most travel is undertaken by rail. It was founded by Henry Lloyd in 1879. After his death, Alfred Cecil Rowlandson bought the business and led the Company’s successful foray into mass market paperback publishing. The NSW Bookstall Company operated from 1879-1946 and published Australian popular fiction and postcards, operated bookshops, circulating libraries and a news agency. Between 1904 and 1922 the NSW Bookstall Company produced and sold between 4 and 5 million books.