It1tir»'ri*'l'1" i'^mtuum^tltamiri^mmAmmtt;mal^MtKMnti ^Mr^itijt!^t»ttaaumij and etched by S. Gribelin, for Richard Blome's " The Gentleman's Recreation," 1686, from a copy lent by Messrs. Ellis ........ "1 between 32 & 33 OTTER HUNTING. Designed by F. Barlow, and etched by N. Yeatbs, for Richard Blome's " The Gentleman's Recreation," 1686, from a copy lent by Messrs. Ellis EAGLE ATTACKING POULTRY. From an early picture by Francis Baklow belonging to" John Lane, Esq. .............. E"VENING : THE WOUNDED HERON. Painted by Abraham Hondius, mezzotinted by J. Watts. Reproduced from a print lent by Messrs. RimeU ...... 35 46 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xv To fact page A DECORATIVE PAINTING, 12 feet long : " The Southern-Mouthed Hounds." From an original picture by Francis Barlow, in Lord Onslow's Collection at Clandon Park, Guildford between 36 and 37 THE FARM YARD. Reproduced by pormiasion of Lord Onslow , from a large painting by Francis Barlow at Clandon Park, Guildford ........... 39 THE EARLIEST PRINT OF A HORSE RACE. By Francis Barlow. From an etching in the British Museum .............. 42 HARE-HUNTING. From an original drawing by Francis Barlow in the Ashmolean Museum.' Etched by Holl.vr, 1671 PARTRIDGE STALKING. From an original drawing by Barlow in the British Museum. Engraved by J. King ............. A NOBLEMAN AND HIS RACEHORSES. The early Wootton and Tillemans Period. Repro- duced by permission of Messrs. Knoedler .......... 51 BTUNTING. Left-hand portion of a long etching by Peter Tillemans. From a proof lent by M. A. Berthel 55 OUTSIDE A RUBBING HOUSE, probably at Newmarket. The 'Wootton-Tillemans Period. Reproduced from the original painting by permission of Mr. Frank Partridge .... 58 RACING LIFE OUTSIDE A RUBBING HOUSE, probably at Newmarket. "Wootton-Tillemans period. Reproduced by permission of Messrs. Knoedler ....... 62 GOING TO COVER. Engraved by T. Burford, 1755, after JambsJSeymour. Reproduced from a print lent by Messrs. Fores ............ 69 A RACE AT NEW\L4RKET. Signed J. 'Wootton, but painted in the style of"\ Tillemans. By permission of Messrs. Knoedler . . . . . .1 \ between 72 & 73 A RACE AT NEWMARKET IN LORD HYLTON'S COLLECTION. By James Seymour, probably in collaboration with Tillemans . . . . . .J THE CHASE. Engraved by T. Burford, 1755, after James Seymour. By permission of Messrs. Fores ' . . 76 " TREEING " THE FOX. 34 x 24i ins. From a picture by the elder Wolstenholme. ^ Reproduced by permission of Messrs. Knoedler ...... THE EPPING FOREST STAG HUNT, 1811. 43 x 35. By the elder Wolstenholme. j" between 80 & 81 The picture now belongs to S. A. Wentworth, Esq. Reproduced by permission of | Messrs. Ackermann ........... FULL CRY. Painted by J. N. Sartorius. The figures engraved by J. Neaole, the landscape by J. Peltro, from an old print (1795) lent by Messrs. Fores ...... 85 A HUNTING SCENE. By J. N. Sartokius. By permission of Messrs. Ackermann ... 87 ENTRANCE HALL AT ALTHORP, NORTHAMPTON, showing how the pictures by 'Wootton are framed structurally in the walls. Two views ....... . . 90 LADY HENRIETTA HARLEY. By John Wootton in 1716. The Duke of Portland's CoUection at Welbeck Abbey 92 ALTHORP HOUNDS AND THE MAGPIE. By John Wootton. By permission of Earl Spencer ^ ALTHORP HOUNDS AND THE EARTH-STOPPER. By John Wootton. By permission of) ^'^ Earl Spencer ...............•' PARTRIDGE STALKING. Reproduced from the original painting by John Wootton at Bad- minton by permission of the Duke of Beaufort ......... 97 JOHN WOOTTON'S PICTURE, " THE VIEW." In the Great Hall at Althorp, Northampton. Reproduced by permission of Earl Spencer .... r between 104 & 105 JOHN WOOTTON'S PICTURE OF "THE DEATH." At the east end of the HaU at Althorp, Northampton. Reproduced by permission of Earl Spencer xvi LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS To face page LADY HENRIETTA HARLEY HUNTING THE HARE ON ORWELL HILL. By John WooTTON, 1716. From the original picture at Welbeck Abbey, by permission of the Duke of Portland .............. THE THIRD DUKE OF PORTLAND. Painted in 1767 by George Stubbs, and now in the Duke of Portland's Collection at Welbeck Abbey ......... JOHN CREWE (b. 1742, d. 1835) ; M.P. for Stafford and for Cheshire; created Lord Crewe in 1806 By George Stubbs. Reproduced by permission of the Marquess of Crewe RICHARD SLATER MILNES (b. 1759, d. 1804); M.P. for York. By George Stubbs. Repro duced from the original picture by permission of the Slarquess of Crewe .... MR. WILDMAN AND HIS SONS WITH ECLIPSE. From the famous picture by George Stubbs Reproduced by permission of Walter Raphael, Esq. ....... 133 112 117 119 120 122 " REAPERS," 1783. By George Stubbs. Reproduced by permission of Messrs. Knoedler & Co. . 124 THIRD DUKE OF PORTLAND AND HIS BROTHER, LORD EDWARD BENTINCK. By] George Stubbs. From the picture at Welbeck Abbey ...... I 2^29 " HAYMAKERS." By George Stubbs, 1783. Reproduced by permission of Messrs. Knoedler J MR. POYNTZ OF BATH LOADING HIS GUN. By George Stubbs. By permission of Messrs. Agnew ................ FREEMAN, KEEPER OF THE EARL OF CLARENDON. By George Stubbs. Engraved as " The Death of the Doe." Reproduced by permission of Messrs. Agnew .... RACEHORSES TRAINING, WITH PORTRAITS OF THE THIRD DUKE OF RICHMOND, MARY, HIS DUCHESS, AND LADY LOUISA LENNOX; ALL ON HORSEBACK. By George Stubbs. 80 x 54 ins. Reproduced from the original picture at Goodwood House by permission of the Duke of Richmond ........... 135 THE THIRD DUKE OF RICHMOND WITH HIS BROTHER, LORD GEORGE LENNOX, AND GENERAL JONES, RIDING, WITH HOUNDS. By George Stubbs. 80 x 54 ins. Reproduced from the original picture at Goodwood House by permission of the Duke of Richmond ................ 138 THE SPANISH POINTER. By George Stubbs. Canvas 24 x 28 ins. Engraved by Scott. ^ By permission of Messrs. Agnew . . . . . . . . . . • I 140 DUNGANNON AND HIS LAMB. Reproduced from an old prmt after George Stubbs . . J PORTRAIT BY GEORGE STUBBS OF A YOUNG ANGLER, EDWARD WILLIAM LEYBORNE (1764—1843), who in 1780 succeeded to the estates of Littlecote and Himstrete Park. In 1805 he assumed the additional surname of Popham. 49J x 36. By permission of Messrs. Knoedler. 144 FOX-HUNTING EPISODE. By George Morland. Reproduced by permission of Messrs. Ackermann ............... 145 " THE FOX INN." By George Morland, 1790. By permission of Messrs. Ackermann . . 149 A COUNTRY RACECOURSE OF MORLAND'S TIME. Drawn by W. Mason, engraved by Jenkins, and aquatinted by Jukes. Two views ......... 156 HARE HUNTING I j^gproduced from original drawings by J. C. Ibbetson by permission of Mr. SHOOTING ./ W.T.Spencer 160 THE MALCOLM ARABIAN. The property of George IV. Painted by Ben Marshall, 1823. Reproduced by permission of Messrs. Bromliead, Cutts & Co. . . . . . .163 COURSING IN SUSSEX. Canvas 45 x 62 ins. By James Ward, R.A. Reproduced by per- mission of Messrs. Knoedler . . . . . . . . . . • .167 PORTRAIT OF WIZARD, 1810. By Ben Marshall. Reproduced by permission of Messrs. Ackermann ............... 170 PORTRAIT OF SAILOR STANDING ON THE DO\^^S. The owner. Sir Henry Tliornhill, holds the bridle. Signed B. Maeshall 1819. By permission of Messrs. Frank T. Sabiu . . . 174 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xvii To face page PORTRAIT OF MAMELUKE, 1827. By Ben Marshall. Reproduced by permission of Messrs. Ackermann. One of the pictures collected by Christopher Wilson (1763-1842) . . . 176 PORTRAIT OF SAM WITH CHIFNEY UP, 1818. From a painting by Ben Marshall. By'j permission of Messrs. Frank T. Sabin . . . . . . . . . . • V 180 THE SQUIRE ANB HIS FAVOURITES. By Ben Marshall. By permission of Messrs. Agnewj FERNELEY'S PICTURE OF "THE QUORN AT QUENBY IN 1823." With key picture. Reproduced from the original picture at Norton Conyers by permission of Sir Guy Graham, Bart. 192 THE LEICESTERSHIRE STEEPLECHASE : Mr. Field Nicholson on Magic, defeats King of the Valley, ridden by Dick Christian. From a print after the elder Henry Alken, lent by Messrs. Fores ................ 213 THE BLACKSMITH'S SHOP. Painted by J. F. Herring, John Phillip, R.A., and Sir Edwin Landseer, R.A. Reproduced from the original painting by permission of Lord Leith of Fyvie 215 GOING TO THE MEET. From a picture by William Shayer. Reproduced by permission of Messrs. Ackermann ............... 220 A SPORTSMAN WITH HIS SON. By Fbancis Wheatley, R.A. (1747-1801). Reproduced by permission of Messrs. Agnew ............ ^ 224 COLONEL THORNTON WITH HIS FAMOUS GUN. By Philip Reinagle and Sawrey Gilpin. From the original picture now at the Durdans in the Earl of Rosebery's Collection DAPPLED GREY HUNTER, WITH A GROOM, IN A LANDSCAPE. By Sawrey Gilpin, R.A. By permission of Messrs. Knoedler . . . . . . . . . . .225 A HUNTING PORTRAIT WITH A LANDSCAPE BACKGROUND. Tliis picture'; seems to be one of those painted in collaboration by Sawrey Gilpin, R.A., and Philip Reinagle, R.A. 49J x 39J. Reproduced by permission of Messrs. 1 Knoedler ..............} between 232 & 233 HUNTSMAN AND HUNTER. From a picture by George Garrard, A.R.A. Re- produced by permission of Messrs. Knoedler ...... THE MEET. Painted by W. Barraud, 1840. By permission of Messrs. Ackermann . . . 240 DEATH OF THE ROEBUCK, with a View of \\Tiatcombe House. Engraved by H. Alken and R. G. Reeve after W. P. Hodges. By permission of Messrs. Ackermann .... 244 BRITISH SPORTING ARTISTS o ~ . ai' :0 - r- <^ ■-■ -CO c "o ^ . Z ^ ■ < ;; ■ cj o OJ INTRODUCTORY THE SUBJECT IN BRIEF I This book is an essay, and its aim is to review the lives and works of many artists who have studied EngUsh country Ufe and sport, mainly associated with hunting and racing. A long span of time is covered, beginning with Francis Barlow in the reign of Charles the First, and ending with J. F. Herring and the younger Wolstenholme. As the subject is Art in its relations with Sport, and Sport in its patronage of Art, this long period is particularly interesting, because its changes and improvements mark a continuous evolution, unbroken by revolutionary fashions and their reactions. J. F. Herring died in 1865, and the younger Wolstenholme in 1883, aged eighty-five. Between these death-years a revolution was at work in art, circulating from the French Impressionists, and meeting everywhere with violent opposition. In the eighteen-eighties the present writer was in the thick of this wordy strife, as an art-student in Belgium and France. Duels were not fought only because rival partisans let off too much steam by talking vehemently. A whole group of painters was accused of uniting sunstroke to epilepsy, and against this " mongrel disease " alarmed hanging committees noisily slammed the doors of exhibitions. If they had accepted the Impression- ists and had hung them upside down, some originality would have been shown by these untiring executioners, who never remembered that a tonic of oppression gave men heart to fight as bravely for new creeds as for old countries. The much ado was extremely foolish, as the innovations were not more at variance with custom than those which the genius of Turner had placed before old-fashioned art-lovers, such as Thackeray, who was alarmed and offended. In five-and-thirty years hints from Impressionism were chosen variously, here and elsewhere, by so many artists that a pretty general change of style was more or less noticeable in even staid exhibitions, that rejected the newer " isms " and " ists " and " ites." It was a change that affected the 3 4 BRITISH SPORTING ARTISTS common attitude towards light, air, colour, form, composition, and the handling of paint. Sportsmen had inherited conservatism with their sporting customs and traditions; but they changed their attitude towards animal painting, little by little, in a succession of phases. The work of S. J. Carter was one phase, Charlton's is another, and G. D. Armour's represents a third; but in order to see completely what has happened since the eighteen-sixties, we must compare the transparent lustre of Herring's paint, or of Edwin Landseer's, with that new air and sunlight, stored up in opaque colour mainly, which Mr. A. J. Munnings, A.R.A., studies with original judgment, as Charles Furse studied them. His equestrian portrait of the Prince of Wales in hunting costume differs as much from Herring's outlook and manner as Herring's attitude towards animals and landscapes differed from John Wootton's and Francis Barlow's. Herring's ways of work, and those of his time, were a continuation — often too " sweet " — of the great emancipating influence of George Stubbs, whose manly life lasted from 1724 to 1806. Wootton, born about 1678, lived to 1765, but he remained outside the hearty modernising outlook that Stubbs circulated by his independent study of nature, and by his complete knowledge of anatomy in its relation to the needs of artists. There are semi-classic qualities in Wootton that repeat landscape lessons learnt from Claude Lorrain and Caspar Poussin; and often they seem to show, in equestrian figures and in battle scenes, the influence of Adam-Francis Van der Meulen, who died about 1694, and who painted for Louis XIV many important episodes of war, after being present, brush in hand, at the aggressive campaigns that Louis undertook, dating from his invasion of the Spanish Netherlands (1667) to the taking of Charleroi (1693). Wootton chose one big subject which Van der Meulen had painted, " The Siege of Lille," and made it real on a canvas 10 ft. by 16 ft., as though he wished to compete against the Flemish painter whom Louis XIV had employed. And this picture of his, like his " Siege of Tournay," belongs to the Crown, just as Van der Meulen's " Siege of Lille," at Versailles, belongs to the French nation, together with other battlepieces.^ As for Wootton's English forerunner, Francis Barlow, he stands alone in the history of our country life and sport; a sower of various good seeds, 1 The Duke of Richmond and Gordon at Goodwood has two Httle pictures by Van der Meulen, " Troops on the March," and " Troops skirmishing," a pair, 11 in. by 8 in., and both are painted with fire and skill. This artist does not become small when his canvases are httle. His " Passage of the Rhine " is only 19J in. by 43 in., yet it looks spacious. > x-d o Si 0) _ tJl o "> a i 5 zz> <5^ THE SUBJECT IN BRIEF 5 which sprang into crops, out of which other harvests were grown by his aftercomers. Before his day there was no EngUsh sporting artists of any note at all, none to whom he could turn for inspiring help. On the Continent it was different. Snyders and Jan Fyt, for example, who were contemporary with Barlow, had inherited the hunting cartoons of Bernard Van Orley (died 1542); also the prolific illustrations of sporting customs, methods, and ceremonies which were produced in Italy by a Flemish artist, John Van der Straeten (i 536-1 605), known also as Stradan, or Delia Strada, or Stradanus; and it seems probable that even the attractive varied miniatures which were added to Gaston de Foix's Livre de Chasse, between 1440-50, were painted by a Flemish artist, for their style has a special realism that suggests this origin. French miniatures of the period are completely different, as in the nobly imaginative art of Jean Foucquet. In any case, that sportsmanship in Flemish painting which culminated in the seventeenth century, had a history of growth, unlike the young pioneering of Francis Barlow, whose predecessors did nothing more than quaint little odds and ends. Joseph Strutt collected many of these trifles from mediaeval manuscripts and early printed books ,^ and Thomas Wright gave a good many in A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England during the Middle Ages. No person would wish to be without these little crude illustrations of early sports and games ; but foreign artists at the same dates were far and away better, because their patrons were really fond of good painting. Some of Barlow's pictures went abroad, and in 1714, about eleven years after his death, more than a hundred of his etchings were republished at Amsterdam, a success worth noting because Holland was particularly proud of her own seventeenth-century etchings and paintings of birds and beasts. There are also two sets of plates after Barlow bearing the imprint of a Paris publisher named De Poilly, who described him as belonging to the German School ! Germany knew better, for one of her art historians, Carl H. von Heinecken (4 vols., 1778-90), wrote more about Barlow's prints than Horace Walpole. Altogether, then. Barlow is the right beginning for a book on sporting artists in England; but, before we turn to him, some preliminary matters need consideration. Reducing them to the lowest possible number, they are as follows : — 1. Our indebtedness to foreigners. 2. The never-ending problems that the representation of running move- ments has pressed upon animal-painters and draughtsmen. ^ Sports and Pastimes of the People of England. 6 BRITISH SPORTING ARTISTS 3. How and why sporting artists, since the death of Stubbs, have been cold- shouldered both by art critics and also by public galleries belonging either to townships or to the State. 4. How the value of their productions as varied history could and should have all of its aspects and phases co-ordinated for the nation's benefit. II A belief is current somehow that British sport in art is entirely national; that it has grown out of the national character and life without receiving much help from abroad. Illusions are apt to be more enjoyable than facts, but a false pedigree in Art is as remote from sportsmanship as a false one on the Turf. Foreign influences began with Francis Cleyn (who died in 1658), and with Abraham Hondius (who died in 1695); and from them we follow a con- tinuous line of foreigners in our country, till we reach Emil Adam, who painted Bend Or, Ormonde and Orme for the Duke of Westminster, and Ladas for Lord Rosebery. A Dutchman, John Wyck (1652-1700), gave lessons to a very able boy named John Wootton; a Fleming, Peter Tillemans (1684-1734), was invaluable as a graphic historian of Newmarket; the Sartorius family, with a sporting painter in each of four generations, came from Nuremberg; the Aiken family came from Denmark; and the Herrings, with their Dutch origin, came from America. What would our sporting art be if we deleted foreigners from its history ? With the zeal of converts, so to speak, they became ardently British, perhaps more so than our native painters, who accepted their country and her ways of life with the quietness of custom. It is not overmuch to say that British sport in art has owed as much to foreigners as our best racehorses have owed to their descent from the Darley Arabian, the Byerley Turk, and the Godolphin Arabian. What then } Our racehorses are British notwithstanding their Eastern origin, for the art of breeding them — and breeding them in a favourable climate, a very important point — became British; so other nations copied it, and also imported it in sires and dams. The French horse Gladiateur, who in 1865 won the Derby and the St. Leger, was bred and reared from British blood stock by his owner the Comte de la Grange; and the great stallion Shark, after winning 20,000 guineas in stakes, was shipped to America in 1786 at the age of fifteen, and he laid the foundation of the American Turf by introducing the victorious blood of Snap. Similarly, our sporting pictures THE SUBJECT IN BRIEF 7 and prints, while receiving invaluable help from abroad, became British, and gained influence wherever these phases of pictorial art were liked. French painters have always been proud of their autocratic self-confidence, but a few Frenchmen, like J. L. Agasse and Clermont-Gallerande, have copied the thoroughbred alertness, with the stable-and-kennel-culture, which George Stubbs established as traditional qualities in our sporting pictures. Through more than two centuries some foreign painters in England have helped our native artists to show in the same paintings and prints that apt cross-breeding, a sort of ideal mongrelism, is useful to aesthetics as well as to eugenics. A wonderful improvement has been brought about in thoroughbred horses, shown in stature and proportion; and this improvement in its gradual history has been recorded by the best painters, not invariably, of course, as a desire to magnify famous racers has belonged to the hero-worship encouraged by sportsmanship. There seems to be only one painter who never adds inches to a great thoroughbred's height. It is George Stubbs, a naturalist as well as a painter. Through a century he has remained under a cloud, like John Wootton. Both Barlow and Wootton have been excluded from the National Gallery, and by officials who think it right and proper to show in a French painting by Manet how soldiers executed the Emperor of Mexico, Ferdinand Maximilian. In recent years the National Gallery has been among the " movies," but its many shifts and changes have brought its official art-criticism no nearer to sportsmanship. Thanks to a recent gift, Stubbs has been placed on the line in a corner, but the picture, while doing justice to one phase of his art, and bringing the eighteenth century pretty near to us, does not reveal him in his most countrified moods. After Stubbs died art critics began to cold-shoulder sporting artists, who were bound closely to their patrons, and also to customs and conventions which sport had preserved. This means that sport in art has appealed, from age to age, not to wayward fashions in taste, but to a popular passion, which has changed but little, and always gradually. Its painters, then, working always under a discipline which has remained steady, have been kept apart from those sudden and startling innovations which have come usually from crazes, but now and then from genius. For we cannot include among our early sport- ing prints the long, quaint, fascinating frieze of the Canterbury Pilgrims that Blake composed and engraved. Painters in other lines have had no popular discipline at all equal to that which sporting artists have worked under, not even portrait painters, who 8 BRITISH SPORTING ARTISTS have encountered a restraining pride of many other sorts in their sitters. Being freer, then, they have been able to make their choice between liberty and neglect. Richard Wilson made his choice vi^ith courage, and his lot vi^as miserable. Like John Sell Cotman, another landscapist of genius, his life in recognition began after he was dead. Even Gainsborough painted occasional landscapes and animals only as a holiday recreation, because buyers pre- ferred portraits and pretty subject pictures. Yet sporting artists were obliged to add landscapes to hunting and racing scenes; and but for them, and other early painters who found their inspiration in animal life out of doors, British landscape art would have had a much longer time to wait for enough encourage- ment. Barlow in a few paintings, and Marmaduke Cradock in some others, and George Stubbs in harvest scenes and shooting pictures, were the earliest English painters who looked at English landscapes as thorough Englishmen, unbiased by any formalism of colour or of technique borrowed from a foreign master, such as Hobbema, Vandevelde, Poussin, and Claude. Stubbs would have been ashamed to throw a foreign style over his passion for England's own country life. A few months ago, at Mr. Ackermann's in New Bond Street, there was a series of four shooting pictures by Stubbs, from the late Mr. Locket Agnew's collection; and their original candour, and serene light colour, illus- trated how an Englishman of the eighteenth century could see and feel when he refused to put England into deep greens and lustrous browns. Foreign painters admire Stubbs, whenever they can see him in examples unharmed by picture-cleaners, because he stood on his own feet, and refused to lean on crutches made in Holland, or in Italy, or in France. Let these matters be remembered when hasty writers on art declare that our sporting painters worked so frequently as servants, so rarely as masters with a free hand, that only a small amount of real greatness can be found in their productions. Well, those who live to please, must please to live; and the changing tides of art's wayward fashions have not carried sportsmen off their feet. No Futurists have been commissioned to work as British sportsmen, because history shows that the only Futurists in art are those who have proved that they are undying Old Masters. No disappearing Cubist has been invited to paint the Derby, or to portray a retiring Master of Foxhounds with his favourite hounds in a given countryside. No pre-Raphaelite was a sportsman in art; and if a hunting subject had been offered to a member of the Brother- hood, it would probably have been declined, as the difficulties of a sporting picture need a courage that is accustomed to their tyranny. Human sitters WILLIAM POYNTZ, of Midgham, with his dog Amber. Painted by GAINSBOROUGH 90 x 60 ins, Kc/.,;„i„c.;/ from the O} initial Picture at AltluMp I'y permission of Earl Spencer. SPORTSMAN WITH DOGS. 51J 521 inches. Painter unknown Possibly J. Highmore. From a pkoto^ral'h icnt I'y MiSS'S, A'jn>i:l/i/\ THE SUBJECT IN BRIEF 9 are quiet, and sometimes too serene; they fall asleep, while animal sitters, if they are well-bred, are confoundedly restless. Tell a foxhound to stand still, and he'll probably roll over on his back " with his heels in the air up," as a Dutch painter said. As a rule — a rule with few exceptions — it is easier to paint the portrait of a great man than the portrait of a famous horse ; and pictures of hunting and racing are more difficult than genre painting and pure landscape. It follows that those artists who have painted equestrian portraits nobly, like Vandyck and Velazquez, should be especially envied and emulated by other portraitists. Yet our sporting artists are usually snubbed by professional critics, and sometimes by that sort of super dealer who is willing to pay for a Blue Boy almost as much as Gainsborough received for the whole of his portraits. Recently one of these men of business said to me : " Sporting pictures ? No, I never touch them ! " The scorn in his voice implied that he would lose his reputation if he bought a Stubbs, or a Wootton, a Marshall or a Ferneley; and that he would take too perilous a toss if he adventured into a rollicking hunt by Henry Aiken. There is comic snobbery ever}^vhere, as confirmed snobs never know that they cut a poor figure. No public gallery in England, please note, does justice to sporting painters; and no thorough attempt has yet been made to show at a public exhibition how sport in art has fared since Barlow's time. The Sports Exhibition in 1891, at the Old Grosvenor Gallery, was good, but not good enough. We need another historic exhibition to-day, and the Royal Academy is the right place for it, because snobbery towards our sporting artists is uncommon in the R.A.'s history. A line of Associates and Academicians connects Gilpin, Stubbs and Reinagle with Mr. A. J. Munnings; and a good many members who worked in other fields were attracted now and then towards hunting, or shooting, or fishing, like Gainsborough, Northcote, Wheatley, Stothard, ZofTany, Sir Francis Grant, and J. M. W. Turner who is represented in the Wallace Collection by " Grouse Shooting " and " Woodcock Shooting." Volume I of the Old Sporting Magazine has a frontispiece after Stothard, in which George the Third is surrounded by his buckhounds ; and this magazine published more prints after Abraham Cooper, R.A., than after any other painter. No fewer than 189 engravings were given of his work. Samuel Howitt came next, with 157 engravings; then E. Corbet with 117, and Harry Hall — ^who painted forty Derby-winners in succession — with 114.^ A first-rate Sports Exhibition at the R.A. would show that there has been ^ See Fred Bajiks' Index to the Old Sporting Magazine. 10 BRITISH SPORTING ARTISTS one good effect in the limited amount of liberty which Art has had in her associations with sportsmen. It shows itself in a gradual development un- checked and unbroken. The line of descent from Barlow, Tillemans, Wootton and Stubbs, on to Furse and Munnings, proves that changes and improvements have come in a continuous growth. Impressionism itself did not produce in them a startling revolution. So we must look at our subject historically, never expecting to get more from an artist than he was able to do within limits firmly set both by his training and by his patrons. Myself, I try to be as interested by a primitive like James Seymour as I am by men who profited by his quaint, pathfinding honesty. It is not always easy, for every generation is biased by its own conceptions of art, which, of course, have no rightful place among earlier methods and ideals. Ill But a Sports Exhibition at the R.A. would be only a passing show, exceed- ingly useful while it lasted, but leaving behind it no enduring record. Some- thing better is needed, and it should be supplied as early as possible by the sportsmanship of the whole nation. What we all need, in fact, is a National Gallery of British Empire Sports, as represented by pictures, prints, sculpture, large photographs, specimen trophies, and the long evolution of sporting weapons and accoutrements .^ That it was not established in pre-war times, when the nation's delight in sports had abundant money, is very deplorable. National enterprise and national sport were disunited. Still, horrible as the aftermath of war is to most of us, such an institution could be founded gradually if the Empire's newspapers collected funds for it, and if sportsmen contributed works of art towards the patient realisation of a well-drawn scheme. Consider the useful and necessary things that the Sports Museum would do. Sport in art is a great deal more than sport plus art (as in illustrations of sporting methods), or than art plus sport (as in masterpieces). It is also a manifold history, in which all that belongs to sport (like the breeding of pedigree hunters, racehorses, and hounds) is represented side by side with changing customs and costumes, and with a great many landscape interests which belong for ever to the gradual changes made in country life since Barlow flew hawks 1 Any student who has had the privilege of consulting the private collection of prints, photographs and drawings collected and arranged by Sir Robert and Lady Witt, will see at once that a similar thorough research devoted to British Empire Sport would be invalu- able as a graphic history of country Ufa. THE SUBJECT IN BRIEF ii at partridges and pheasants, coursed deer with greyhounds, and hunted quaintly with those " southern-mouthed hounds " of which Richard Blome wrote in The Gentleman's Recreation, 1686. Similar dogs, big-headed, heavy and slow, fit for woodlands and hilly land, are to be found among the miniatures in Gaston de Foix's Livre de Chasse. A separate room would have to be given to every aspect of this history that has had an evolution of its own. At present no person can see in focus, co-ordinated, any one of these invaluable things, for sporting pictures, with only a few exceptions, are in private collections far apart, and a great many of the earlier ones have still to be identified. You may gather impressions from sporting artists through forty years, taking advantage of all opportunities; only to find that your notes and remembrances are but a crude preparation for the work that you wish to do — namely, the delightful work of seeing in co-ordinating focus great spans of gradual change and improvement. One thing particularly is a surprise and a worry to students of sporting artists. If they need photographs of hunting methods and episodes by Rubens, Fyt, Snyders, and many other foreign masters, they can get them easily, but if they want photographs of Barlow, Wyck, Hondius, Tillemans, Wootton, Stubbs, Gilpin, Reinagle, James Ward, or any other artist associated with British sport, their lot is unenviable. None can be bought, and to have photographs taken means four things : begging for privileges from private owners, intruding upon the privacy of home life, and, probably, incurring far more expense in time and money than you can reasonably afford. It is wonderfully easier to study even those prehistoric huntsmen who dis- covered sculpture, engraving, and fresco painting, perhaps as many as seven- teen thousand years ago. Illustrated books on these first art students of animals are easy to find. In a fortnight you could read Mr. Parkyn's good book three times, while studying scores of illustrations. How many photographs of Wootton, or of Stubbs, could you find in a fortnight, or in a month .'' If you got one of a typical picture you would be fortunate, and also grateful. As a rule, then, students turn to prints after the pictures, and pick up their know- ledge of each artist's own handiwork Uttle by little, over a long period of years. Prints are invaluable within well-marked limits. Very often they tell us more about their engravers than about the painters whom they represent; and many of them have entered the high finance of art. Here is a great handi- cap, as a passion for research really seems to be a gift (as a rule) from the Patron Saint of Poverty. It is the antithesis — and also the slave — of acute 12 BRITISH SPORTING ARTISTS business. When the well-to-do happen to possess a great fondness for research, as in the case of the late Sir Walter Gilbey, their collected know- ledge is generally sold by auction after they are dead, and often at a wrong time. Sir Walter Gilbey learnt from his research — not to see everything in focus, his collection being inevitably too small, but — to study sporting artists from different points of view, and always in association with sequences of change that helped to make the distant near and the past engagingly present. Perhaps he overstated the value of horse-portraiture to students of race- horses and hunters. It is a great help when horse portraits are chosen with infinite care, always in answer to the question, " Has the physical aspect of this horse been magnified by a painter's admiration .'' " In order to answer fairly, portraits of the same horse by different painters must be compared without bias, side by side with written or printed evidence. By my side is a photograph of a picture painted in 171 5 by Wootton; it represents a famous racer. Bonny Black, a daughter of Black Hearty, noted as one of the best runners of her day. The picture is among the twenty-one Woottons at Welbeck Abbey. There is a contrast so emphatic between the great filly and her environment that Bonny Black, with her ill-tempered eyes and ears and mouth, is dramatically large and decorative. The horizon is carried low ; in the middle distance a number of wee things are horses gallop- ing; and much nearer, on our left, are other horsemen, larger, but still very small, and inactive. A scarf is thrown around Bonny Black's neck; a boy holds it with his right hand and moves towards a stable on our left; and he is too small to form a standard by which to estimate the mare's height. On our right, listening to a boy behind him, is a small groom, whose left hand grasps a two-handled gold cup, while with the right hand he holds out a pedigree scroll. All is accessory to Bonny Black; so she dominates with the immense vigour of a black silhouette. Here is decorative art, not exact portraiture.^ Still, when horse-portraiture is faithful, Sir Walter Gilbey helps us greatly when he explains in what respects our own racehorses differ from those of the eighteenth century ; respects of which we can gain visible knowledge from one source only. Art, studied side by side with written descriptions. What Sir Theodore Cook has collected and printed about Eclipse, for instance, needs visible illustration, and it is supplied by several painters, most notably George 1 It will be seen that this fact applies to many other horse portraits by Wootton, raising a discussion over some interesting questions. BONNY BLACK. By JOH N WOOTTON, painted in 171 5 for f 12 18 0. 40x50. From the picture at Welbecl< Abbey. ReproducrJ hy pa mission o/ the Duke o/ Fartlami. THE BLOODY-SHOULDERED ARABIAN, 1724. By JOHN WOOTTON. From the picture at Welbecl< Abbey. Refroduecd by permission of the Di,kc of Forltand. THE SUBJECT IN BRIEF 13 Stubbs, whose scientific observation has more value than the inferior care taken by Francis and J. N. Sartorius. As Gilbey wrote at the beginning of this century : — " If we are not wedded to our own opinions concerning equine character- istics of a hundred and fifty years back, we can learn much from pictorial records. There are some who look upon George Stubbs' portraits of race- horses and exclaim ' Impossible ! ' These incredulous ones who disdain what they can know nothing of, may be reminded that great changes have been brought about in the thoroughbred horse since Stubbs lived and painted. Are they aware, for example, that the average height of the racehorse in the middle of the eighteenth century was one hand and a half less than the average height of the racehorse at the end of the nineteenth century ? Admiral the Hon. Henry John Rous, the greatest authority on racehorses and racing, in Baily's Magazine of Sports and Pastimes, i860, writes : ' A century ago race- horses were about the average of 14 hands 2 inches. ... I attribute the great growth and size of the present thoroughbred horses to the care which is bestowed upon them in early life.' " The thoroughbred ever since the middle of the eighteenth century has been increasing in stature, on an average an inch in twenty-five years, till now we seldom proclaim him a racehorse of the first class unless he stands 15-3 to 16 hands. " A worthy painter therefore deserves that we should invest him with something of the character of the historian. The statements of tongue or pen, unhappily, are often capable of differing interpretations; but the painted record allows of little or no dispute " — when it does not show hero-worship by magnifying a racer's height. As we pass in this book from chapter to chapter, interesting questions will arise, as, for example. Did Tillemans mark correctly the difference between racehorses and hunters ? Were hunters in the time of Stubbs heavier than hunters are now ? Did they look frequently like near descendants of war- horses that carried armour and armoured knights } Again, who can explain why the rocking-horse gallop remained in vogue with such an awful antique persistence, though few of its positions had any real charm, either as impressive design or as a suggestion of rapid movement ? Perhaps the full rearing gallop — such as we see in the British Museum when Seti the First, standing within his Egyptian battle-chariot, charges motionless upon his foes — is at once the most at variance with movement and the most effective as formal decoration, though we cannot help marvelling how Seti keeps his balance. And which phase of this immemorial gallop is the most wearisome .'' To my mind it is 14 BRITISH SPORTING ARTISTS the low- lying phase, with the hind legs outstretched so far, and pressing so hard upon the ground, that only a miracle could enable a horse to take another bound forward. J. N. Sartorius repeated this position over and over again, in dogs as in racehorses, custom being a sort of blindness to him. He painted a collection of fifteen pictures for one of the fathers of the Turf, Christopher Wilson (1763-1842), of Ledstone Hall, Yorkshire; these pictures were bought from a descendant by the well-known firm of Ackermann, and here on my desk are photographs of them all. Five show this gallop in variations. Not one is a daisy-clipper, but all are overdone in one way or other. Perhaps the most excessive tries to represent how Dungannon beat Rockingham by a head and half-neck, in 1793, after a long tough struggle over the Beacon Course at New- market. Though these brave horses, with their tongues thrust out, are doing their best against a handicapping painter, the jockeys flourish their whips for a last unmerciful lash. There are protests against whipping in early nine- teenth-century writers on racing ; and Sir Charles Bunbury, good and fine old man, was opposed to it also. Even Henry Aiken accepts the rocking-horse gallop in his book on The Beauties and Defects in The Figure of The Horse, published in 1816. A plate shows it as a gallop fit for hunting, as hunters have to pass over bad ground of many sorts. Aiken was thirty-two when he wrote and illustrated this book. Well, did he use this gallop in his own hunting pictures ? No ! His art was in accord with Jack Mytton's high spirits. It gallops adventurously. If Aiken were alive to-day, what would be his attitude towards instantaneous photography, so called .'' Would he be very suspicious, choosing only such occasional hints as give attractively a new impression of speed ? Very often, in photographs of races, horses that approach the winning post seem to be paralysed in attitudes of agony. And this fact is not hard to explain. A horse travels so rapidly that when a fraction of a second in his movement is arrested and fixed for ever by photography, how can we reasonably expect that an impression of speed will be obtained .'' What we need is a synthesis, a varied convention right in art. A hundredth part of a second may give an idea of swift motion, but its usual results either afflict speed with paralysis, or cause running horses to look tipsy. This year, 1922, in a photograph of the Lincolnshire Handicap, the victor Granely was shown at the winning post with only one foot on the ground — the left fore one, a very strained and ugly position similar to one that the late Mr, Walter Winans painted and modelled, causing much controversy. Artists THE SUBJECT IN BRIEF 15 have nothing to do with a posture of this sort, or with any camera fact which looks Hke a slander on the beautiful elasticity of galloping thoroughbreds. Their duty is to seek on and on for beautiful untruths by which animated motion can be suggested in carefully-chosen variations. And note what happens when artists copy from instantaneous photo- graphs. They cease to be guided by their own observation, and, while depicting what they cannot see in nature with their own eyes, obey the camera meekly, as medical men consult X-rays photography. In so doing they exchange an old convention for a newer one, which is not better than the old one unless it gives an improved impression or illusion of speed. If respect for truth be their guide, they should never try to represent a gallop, since they end it as a gallop when they arrest it on canvas, and make it "as idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean." Aime Morot's famous picture of the cavalry fight at Rezonville, painted in 1886, is memorable not because its painter collected hints from photographs, but because the hints were chosen discreetly and then employed with such original power and fervour that a new and very dramatic illusion of speed was produced, combined with an impres- sion of weight which looks immense. True Art is always a great adventurer among compromises and illusions. Who was the first man to lift from the ground the hind legs of a galloping animal ? He was a prehistoric artist who lived in a late period of the Older Stone Age, and whose handicraft was discovered within the cave of Gourdan, on the northern flank of the Pyrenees. Upon a stone with a sharp flake of flint he represented a bounding reindeer. He could not show the hind quarters because there was not room enough on his stone; but the rest of the body has a position which enables us to be sure that the hind legs could 7iot rest on the ground. It is a gallop — not along a horizontal plane, but — down a gentle slope, and the reindeer is in so much distress that he looks at the point when he must either stop and stand at bay, or collapse with fatigue and fear. A famous French antiquarian. Abbe H. Breuil, himself an artist, writing with almost limitless admiration of galloping reindeer in Palaeolithic Art, says that no classical drawings of animals in motion, at Mycenae, or by Assyrian and Egyptian artists, are so spirited, so full of life; and that nothing so true appeared again in Europe till the eighteenth century a.d. Superlatives take one's breath away when they leap over many thousands of years; but M. Breuil could meet opposition here, since the rocking-horse gallop runs through the whole of the eighteenth century. But a pupil of i6 BRITISH SPORTING ARTISTS Rubens, Abraham Van Diepenbeek, who came to England and worked for the Duke of Newcastle, made a sketch of a galloping battle-horse showing the hind feet raised from the ground, and the fore ones flexed, as in present-day photographs of racehorses. ^ Diepenbeek died in 1675. According to Professor Salmon Reinach, the position of galloping horses with all four legs outstretched passed from Mycenaean Art to China and Japan, and thence with Chinese Art to Europe. This may be true, because Chinese design and handicraft was imported to England towards the end of the seventeenth century; it attracted so much attention that its importation increased; a " Chinese taste " in English workmanship gradually developed, and culminated between 1750-60, with much help from Sir WiUiam Chambers and Thomas Chippendale. But if the Mycenaean gallop reached European art by way of China, we must prove that Diepenbeek got his idea from Chinese work, and this cannot be proved. Then there is the point that many ancient ideas, long lost, have been renewed in places far apart by observant minds having no communication with one another, and ignorant even of their classical history. Apart from this, the " new " gallop suggested by Diepenbeek had no imme- diate influence of a lasting sort. It was repeated by another Fleming, Peter Tillemans, but only in two or three background horses in a single picture; and Lord Onslow has a primitive hunting piece, perhaps by James Seymour, in which an obliterated horse, showing through the over-painting, a patch of green, has the four feet outstretched, while another behind it, also blotted out with green, has the hind feet pressed against the ground. When a change did come it appeared pretty often in the same picture with the rocking-horse gallop. This is true of James Pollard's painting of " George the Third Hunt- ing in Windsor Forest," which was on view recently at Mr. Fores' in Piccadilly ; and a colour-plate is given here to illustrate this fact in a racing picture. It is taken from a print after H. Bernard Chalon, and shows how the Welter Stakes of the Bibury Club were run on June i6th, 1801. The leading horses, Fisherman and Agamemnon, ridden by E. Delme and the Hon. George Germaine, lift their hind feet, while the other horses do not. The third one is Hero, with George Talbot up. Behind, seen through the gap separating Hero from the leaders, is an equestrian portrait of the Prince of Wales. On our left, near the winning post, there are two sportsmen; the shorter one is the great-great-grandfather of Mr. Alfred J. Day. 1 Illustrated by Sir Theodore Cook in his well-known history of the turf, vol. i., p. 47 : " The Duke of Newcastle on Horseback at Bolsover." a: m . " (0 -^i < o THE SUBJECT IN BRIEF 17 IV In a book on a vast subject a great deal of help has to be sought from a great many quarters. The printed help in the present subject is very much less abundant than it should be, and, very often, it is both scrappy and patchy, as in George Vertue's manuscript notes, in Horace Walpole's volumes, and in the biographical sketches of sporting artists given in The Dictmiary of National Biography. Twenty odd years ago the late Sir Walter Gilbey was so astonished by the great dearth of books on animal painters that he found time in his very busy life to compile three volumes, besides one on George Stubbs, which was published at three guineas in a tiny edition of 150 copies. By this useful hard work he formed a ground-plan for future research, revision, and construction. Much later, in 1908, a little book on sporting prints was published, with coloured illustrations, and a chatty, pleasant introduction by Mr. Ralph Nevill; but far too much space was given to coaching, which had nothing to do with sport. Snowbound mail coaches made attractive prints, but they served the world's business in a tedious manner, and no traveller in them ever imagined that he was a sportsman, or that his wife and children enjoyed themselves when they had to pass a night in a snow-bound coach. Quiet folk who stayed at home in winter liked these little dramas of snow in prints. Their lives may have been dull, because there were no incessant " evening " papers to shriek with penny-pleading salesmanship over the newest crop of crime. " Sensations " being overdone, and staled by routine, the public of to-day is a jaded expert in its reading intimacy with horrors; it cannot shiver because it is expected to shiver all day long over headlined wickedness, social and political. Many prints come down to us from a time when a bad snow-storm, with stage coaches in distress, caused publishers of coloured prints to bestir themselves, lest an infrequent excitement should lose its immediate market value in the coming of spring-like w^eather ! Though newspaper readers of to-day are crime-seasoned, they would be alarmed and shocked if bull-baiting and cock-fighting appeared once more as facts in life and in art. George Stubbs was not shocked, for he composed a bull-baiting with pleasure; and good John Wootton, in his portrait of the old and eccentric father of the Turf, Tregonwell Frampton, placed a trimmed cock on a table by the veteran's left side. Does anyone really suppose that popular liking for these old-fashioned sports did more harm socially, from year to year, than is done now by that commercial zeal which overflows into i8 BRITISH SPORTING ARTISTS endless columns of print about murders, divorces, and other marketable garbage for the sewers of civilisation ? Custom is not a moralist, it is an opiate that sends reason to sleep. Long ago, in several parts of Europe, stags were driven into lakes and rivers, then shot at from the banks with crossbows. This was a custom till reaction turned it into a cruelty ; but surely it was not more at odds with sports- manship than is the current fashion of printing at least as many words about a murder trial as we find in Shakespeare and Milton combined ? The more people study the history of sports in its various relations with social customs, past and present, the more they will be troubled by questions of this sort. The civilian world changes, and flatters itself that its changes denote progress, but I would sooner trust what sportsmen regard as fair than I would accept as right a verdict passed by a change of custom in society and in legislation. In even the worst periods of sport there was far less cruelty in hunting customs than in the punishments enforced by law and sanctioned by public opinion. There are only two modern histories of sport in art, and they do not cover the range of the present essay. La Chasse a travers les Ages, by Comte Auguste Jean Franfois de Chabot, treats of its great subject in its French aspects, as a rule, from the Older Stone Age to the end of the nineteenth century. It is produced with a Frenchman's liking for balance, form and harmony. Then there is Mr. Baillie-Grohman's Iconography of Sport, overcrowded with so many illustrations reproduced in so many sizes that one cannot help thinking of a lively and varied scrap-album. The text has no chance of being studied because too many blocks tire the most diligent eyes and minds. It is foreign in its outlook, though its title-page says that it runs from the fifteenth century to and through the eighteenth. The little that is said about two or three Englishmen is outside its author's natural bent, which has collected a vast amount of knowledge about foreign illustrative work. Old sporting customs, methods and ceremonies have thrown a spell over Mr. Baillie-Grohman, who omits from his book many masterpieces of painting. But every writer has limits, and Mr. Baillie-Grohman has done vastly more than anyone else along his chosen lines. His research would be much better known than it is — and it ought to be very popular — if his text were put in one volume and 50 per cent, of his illustrations in another. At the British Museum there is no excess of sporting prints and sketches. The Print Room, in fact, and its most helpful staff, would welcome a great many more. It is odd, but legacies of sporting sketches and prints have been THE SUBJECT IN BRIEF 19 very infrequent in the Print Room's history. Let us hope that sportsmen in the future will remember this fact. At present no public gallery can afford to compete in the open market ; but surely there should be money enough to show in photographs carefully taken from well-chosen pictures how sport in art has fared in England since the days of Francis Barlow and Abraham Hondius .'' I ask this question after losing many a laborious day hunting vainly for typical work. When I received a set of negatives from Welbeck Abbey, chosen and packed by Mr. Richard W. Goulding, F.S.A., I forgot my sixtieth birthday and was sixteen again. No excitement equals that of a stroke of good fortune in research. There are always many failures and snubs to add greatly to its heartening value, and to make gratitude for favours received a lasting pleasure. Contributors are collaborators, and some have supplied information as well as pictures or prints, like Lord March, Lord Onslow, Lord Althorp, Sir Theodore Cook, Sir Robert and Lady Witt, Mr. Oswald Magniac, Mr. A. J. Mannings, A.R.A., Mr. Richard W. Goulding, Mr. Fores, Mr. David C. Bolton, Mr. Ackermann, Mr. Payne, Messrs. Knoedler and Messrs. Agnew. But I alone am responsible for the choice and the handling of materials, and also for the shortcomings that creep into arduous research, as into all other diffi- cult workmanship. And now this battle called a book has to be manoeuvred through high costs of production into a market harried by book-borrowers and book-hirers, whom no author can ever accept as good sportsmen. Bless me, a well-bound book can be read in a year by a hundred hirers, each one of whom contributes no more than a hundredth part of a small royalty. One buyer, then, being a sportsman, a man of fair play, does as much for an author as is done by a hundred hirers. As for book-borrowers, the late William De Morgan said to me in a letter that one copy of his Joseph Vatice — a poor, battered, dogs'-eared copy — had been read by the whole British colony in Florence. Sportsmanship and readers of this bad sort are very far apart. There was a year's work in De Morgan's first book, and nearly fifty years of observation, with wit and humour from a most friendly genius. Yet book- borrowers declined to buy it; they preferred to use it as flies do an open pot of honey. And these matters unite us to Francis Barlow, who had much to do with books and their market adventures, in an age as bad as these present post- war times. More than once he was his own publisher, and, of course, in accordance with the custom of his day, he sought a patron. One of his con- temporaries, with whom he has much in common, the good poet-vicar of Dean 20 BRITISH SPORTING ARTISTS Prior in Devonshire, Robert Herrick, sang again and again about the woes of authors, begging for protection in " A Psalm or Hymn to the Graces," and saying also with worldly foresight to his book : — " Make haste away, and let one be A friendly patron unto thee, Lest wrapped from hence, I see thee lie Torn for the use of pastery ; Or see thy injured leaves serve well To make loose gowns for mackerel ; Or see the grocers, in a trice. Make hoods of thee to serve out spice." Nothing quite so bad as this has happened to Barlow's books. A great many copies have been dismembered by vandal tradesmen, in order that their prints might be sold separately; and no complete copy is ever valued at a sufficiently high price, because sportsmen do not yet know that Barlow's place in a library is by the side of his good fishing contemporary, Izaak Walton, whose book is complete, whatever critics may have said about his angling. HAWKING FOR PHEASANTS, 1684. From an Original Drawing by FRANCIS BARLOW in the Ashmolean Mu- seum, Oxford. Engraved bv ARTH U R SOLYfor Blome's "The Gentleman s Recreation." CHAPTER I FRANCIS BARLOW AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES I In 1642, when the Great Civil War began, Francis Barlow was about sixteen, not old enough to be a soldier. Several artists, like Hollar and Faithorne, joined the royal standard ; and by the year of Naseby, or a little later, Barlow himself had grown into military age. Did he fight then, and against the art-detesting Puritans, whose fierce intolerance had begun to make books even in Shakespeare's time, when Philip Stubbes was the forerunner of William Prynne .'' As Charles the First was almost an ideal friend to art and artists, I have been greatly attracted by this question : Is there any evidence anywhere to show that Barlow was captured, either at Basing House with Wenzel Hollar and William Faithorne, on October 13th, 1645, or at Holmby House with the King, on the 3rd of June, 1647 ? Faithorne was banished into France, and Hollar also was expelled from England till the year 1652. Well, what happened to Francis Barlow? I am doubtful, though I have struggled hard to discover. He should have been in the field before his twenty-first birthday. There are things which suggest that he was a Royalist, while one very interesting fact implies that he may have been on the other side. The great George Monck is found among his patrons, and I cannot say at what date Barlow came under this commanding influence. It may have been during the period that separated the death of Charles the First from the Dunbar period in Monck's Cromwellian doings. On the other hand. Barlow's earliest known friends were Royalists at heart, like the poet Benlowes, and the famous preacher Dr. Wilkins, and the artists Hollar and Faithorne, who worked with him as collaborators after they returned to London. There is also a portrait etching of the little Princess Elizabeth, second daughter of Charles the First, which Thomas Dodd, long a famous authority on prints, has given to Barlow, and which certainly seems to have the traits of his early style. It is a rare octavo print and found as a 21 22 BRITISH SPORTING ARTISTS frontispiece in the Electra of Sophocles, presented to her Highness the Lady EUzabeth, with an Epilogue, showing the parallel in two Poems, the Return and the Restoration. This book was printed at the Hague in 1649, when Barlow was about three-and-twenty. Less than three years later he was doing clever etched work for the poet Benlowes, including a very good portrait. It is a small oval portrait of the little princess, who has her head turned towards the right in a three-quarters view, with ringlets clustered about her smiling face; and a Cupid behind on the left lifts a black veil. I know only one print of this etching, and its bottom margin is cut off, with the inscription.^ Thomas Dodd speaks of four lines of verse, and gives the print without hesita- tion to Barlow. It is younger in style than Barlow's etched portrait of Benlowes, but notably sympathetic. But when we think of Monck among the artist's friends, we cannot be sure to what political party Barlow belonged during his early struggles. His biography has many doubtful points. Nothing is known about his parents, and the date and place of his birth are also uncertain. According to books of reference, whose writers often follow one another meekly, like sheep through a gap in a hedge. Barlow came to London from Lincolnshire. This bit of biography is taken from George Vertue (i 684-1 756), an engraver of importance, and a maker of very valuable detached notes on artists and their works. His manuscripts are treasured in the British Museum. But Vertue loved research for its own sake, and his many volumes of notes must be closely examined before any statement of his can be accepted as his final opinion. There is no general index of his memoranda compiled by the B.M., and the volumes being numerous and also closely written in small penmanship, often without method and in a chaos of items, no student can be quite certain that he has not overpassed some trifles that he needs. About ten years after speak- ing about " Barlow of Lincolnshire," Vertue shook his head, much perplexed, over another scrap of information. A book of plates appealed to his note- taking habit; it was called Multce et diversce Avium Species, and its designer was " Franciscum Barlovium, Anglum Artis pingendi celleberremas, Philo- musum, Indigenam Londinensem." Many Different Species of Birds, drawn from life by " Francis Barlow, a celebrated English painter, a lover of the Muses and a native of London." Native of London 1 ^ 1 A copy of the book in the British Museum. B.M. Press Mark, 1067. e. 20. 2 Note also the words " Lover of the Muses," as verses appear under Barlow's racing print, and under a dozen etchings after his designs on Hunting, Hawking, and Fishing. q: < i; LU ; " - 3 -DCO CO i: ^ cO u I- < 5 H ^ o ~ -o — 5 O o O ? u. ■ o ?^^ Q. °^ Oq .E Occ> qCDq I- CD CO FRANCIS BARLOW AND CONTEMPORARIES 23 Vertue underlined the word " Indigenam " and wrote below it : " Query, in what was the meaning of it." And we are face to face with the same question. If Barlow was brought from Lincolnshire to London when he was a baby, perhaps he could be described with truth as a native of two places, London and Lincolnshire; and for this reason my research has worked along both lines. I have advertised in The Lincolnshire Notes and Queries, and have tried also to come upon him in London records. This research has been less fruitful than I should like it to be, but it has collected many facts, and now a sketch of Barlow and his influence can be offered as a ground-plan to students. That the Father of English Sport in Art should have been so long neglected is lamentable. Only a person here and there knows him. A few months ago a hundred and twelve of his original etchings, illustrating the first edition of his book on JEsop's Fables, 1666, was offered by a bookseller's catalogue at three guineas, and one of Barlow's friends was too war-stricken to pay even this trivial sum ! Sixty-three shillings for a hundred and twelve good etchings — forming a generous epitome of seventeenth-century country life, and much else ! When George Vertue came upon some much earlier etchings by Barlow he was very much struck by their merit, and wrote as follows (vol. iii., p. 75, 1 725-1 731) :— " Several prints drawn and etched by Barlow with the picture of Ed. Benlowes, Esq., in fol., for his book of Divine Poems, Theophila, printed 1652. By this it appears that Barlow was then a man of some fame and reputation. The animals that are etched are done with spirit and judgment." Well, the animals and birds, as well as the hunting episodes, in Barlow's edition of JEsop's Fables, are very much better, apart from the portrait of Benlowes himself, a beautifully modelled face, etched with a touch so deli- cately sensitive that Vandyck himself would have praised it as an original offshoot of his own etched portraits. These two qualities, spirit and judg- ment, noted by Vertue's trained eye, run through Barlow's etched work improvingly ; and when sportsmen know Barlow they will be heartily ashamed of the neglect which they have shown towards his prints and pictures. For a long time Mr. Laurence Binyon has been attracted by Barlow's original etchings and drawings, and a student now and then has come upon a Barlow painting, like Mr. Richard W. Goulding, F.S.A., who, in answer to my advertisement, put me in touch with some Barlows at Shardeloes. Thirty- one years ago, at the Sports Exhibition in the Grosvenor Gallery, London, 24 BRITISH SPORTING ARTISTS only one Barlow was hung, a picture of ducks and a spaniel, lent by the Earl of Kilmorey. Barlow loved spaniels, and one of his spaniel pictures has been reproduced in colour for this book. It belongs to Mr. Tyrwhitt Drake of Shardeloes. II How was this artist educated ? The Commonwealth was about as unfriendly towards art as the devil towards holy water. England had no art schools, and her own traditions in painting were confined mainly to miniatures. It is said that Barlow took lessons in portraiture from " a face-painter " named Sheperd, or Shepherd, or Sheppard, for surnames were spelt variously during the seventeenth century. The poet Herrick, poor man, saw his name written also Haericke, Heyricke, Eyrick, and Erick; and Vertue writes of Wotton, Wooton, and Wootton, referring to the fine artist who is known to us as John Wootton. Similarly, Horace Walpole's Sheperd may be the William Shep- pard and Shepherd mentioned several times by George Vertue, who speaks of him first of all as a face-painter of King Charles the Second's time. In those days Sheppard was known to one of Vertue 's authorities, named Russell, who liked him as a pleasant companion. Sheppard lived in London, near the Royal Exchange, but at last retired to Yorkshire, where he died. In a much later note Vertue speaks of Durham House in Somersetshire, where a Mr. Blathwayt has " a picture of Thomas Killigrew, sitting at a table with his dog, painted by W. Shepherd, perhaps the original." Vertue refers also to a Shepherd who went to Rome, but forgets to say whether he is speaking of the same man. A portrait of Killigrew by Sheppard ^ was engraved nobly in line by the elder Faithorne for the folio edition of Killigrew's plays, published in 1664, the fourth year of Charles the Second's reign, when Barlow was about thirty- eight. Eight years earlier, in 1656, Barlow was a famous painter, according to John Evelyn's Diary (vol. i. p. 312). So it seems to me that Barlow and the painter of Killigrew's portrait may have been too much of the same age to work together as apprentice and master. There may have been two Sheppards, father and son. Vertue's brief sketch of Barlow's life is found among his earliest notes, and it is written not in his own penmanship, but in that of an ignorant person who should not have been chosen as a transcriber, and whose work has to be checked by reference to Vertue's own scattered notes, and to Barlow's work. ^ The name is spelt in this way below the print. FRANCIS BARLOW AND CONTEMPORARIES 25 Yet this rough sketch has been accepted by writers, as by Horace Walpole, whose volumes on early art in England are based mainly — but not always correctly — on Vertue's memoranda. Walpole's independent research adds little that is thorough, and I prefer his leader, George Vertue, whose account of Barlow runs as follows : — " Francis Barlow was born in Lincolnshire, and at his coming to London, put prentice to one Shepherd, a face-painter, with whom he lived but few years, because his fancy did not lie that way, his genius leading him wholly to drawing of fowl, fish and beasts,^ wherein he arriv'd at that perfection that, had his colouring and pencilling been as good as his draught, which was most exact, he might have easily excelled all that went before him in that kind of painting, of which we have an instance in the six books of prints after him. He drew some ceilings of Birds for noblemen and gentlemen in the country. There are several prints extant after the designs of this master, among which are the cuts for a new edition of Msop's Fables,^ in which undertaking he wanted due encouragement. He also drew several of the monuments in Westminster Abbey and in Henry the Seventh's Chapel, which were intended for a large edition of Mr. Keep's Monumenta Westmonasterieusia . But notwithstanding all Mr. Barlow's excellency in his way, and though he had the good fortune to have a considerable sum of money left him by a friend, he died poor in the year 1702." It is clear from these rough notes that Vertue had not seen any of the large pictures in which Barlow made himself known to his patrons as the very earliest of England's native pioneers in large decorative paintings and in ample landscape united to birds, and dead fish, and sometimes to hunting. Lord Onslow at Clandon Park, Guildford, has four large Barlows of this sort, inherited from Mr. Denzil Onslow, of Pyrford, who was one of Barlow's good friends. Vertue does not name even one of Barlow's pictures, and there is only one brief note on the monochrome wash-drawings that Barlow made by the score in sepia and Indian ink for his own etchings and for other men to turn into prints.^ Further, Vertue forgot somehow to add to his rough and scrappy sketch things that he learnt later about Barlow. He learnt from a 1 Incorrect, since an etched portrait of Benlowes belongs to the first period of Barlow's prints, hke some very careful figure composition, as in Plates 8 and ii of Sir Robert Stapylton's Juvenal, 1660. 2 These etchings are by Barlow himself, not after him, as Vertue would have seen had he known the book when these first notes were written. And the book appeared in three Enghsh editions, and one printed in French at Amsterdam : surely an important success. ^ But it is an interesting note : " Drawing of fowls in Indian ink marked Barlow, 1694." In this year Barlow was about sixty-eight. 26 BRITISH SPORTING ARTISTS pocketbook of notes written by Richard Symonds, in the middle of the seven- teenth century, that Barlow, about 1653, lived near the Drum in Drury Lane, and received £8 for a picture of fishes. And Vertue was not at ease about the date of Barlow's death. In vol. i. of his notes he says (p. 68) : " Mr. Barlow, painter, died at Westminster ; inquire at the Robin Hood on the Mill Bank." Whether he did inquire, overpressed as he was always with work, I cannot find out; but he could have learnt something from the title-page of the third edition of Msop's Fables, published in 1703, where Barlow appears as a living man : " Printed by R. Newcomb for Francis Barlow, and are to be sold by the Booksellers of London and Westminster. 1703." So we cannot say that he died in the previous year. The third edition and the second were dedicated to William Earl of Devonshire. Now, as Barlow commissioned the printing we may be certain that Newcomb would act as a man of business. If Barlow died poor, as Vertue believed, he was poor when he went to Newcomb, and asked for the printing costs, which included 143 etchings,^ and a large amount of text in three languages, Latin, French, and English. Either Barlow was not so poor as we are told, or the Earl of Devonshire and other friends paid for him and comforted his last years. Hollar died in poverty, and Faithorne also .2 It is easy for artists to outlive their vogue; and as Barlow's connection with book publication lasted from 1652 to 1703, there was room for bitter vicissitudes, and the kindness of faithful friends. There is another point in Vertue 's biographical sketch. It is a piece of criti- cism that Walpole misunderstood. Vertue says of Barlow : " Had his colour- ing and pencilling been as good as his draught, which was most exact, he might have easily excelled all that went before him in that kind of painting. . . ." Rightly understood, this passage means that Barlow cannot be placed among the big masters. He is not a Rubens nor a Snyders in hunting scenes, for example. But his gifts are versatile and very fine, and John Evelyn's admiration 1 Thirty-one new designs were added by Barlow to the second and third editions. They illustrate the Life of ^Esop. Only three of them are etched by Barlow himself, as we shall see. 2 Hollar's death is described in a letter written to George Vertue from York by Francis Place, May 20th, 1716 : " He was near 70 when he died about 36 or forty years ago in a house he had in Gardeners Lane King Street Westminster of a Parralitick fitt, and before his departure the Bayliff came and seizd all he had, which gave him a great disturbance, and he was heard to say they might have stayed till he was dead. . . ." Mr. Henry M. Hake, of the Print Room, the British Museum, has written for the Walpole Society an excellent illustrated article on Francis Place, one of Barlow's collaborators. FRANCIS BARLOW AND CONTEMPORARIES 27 shows what seventeenth-century Englishmen thought of Barlow's paintings. In 1 68 1 Evelyn dined with Denzil Onslow at Pyrford, and found " the hall adorned with paintings of fowl and huntings, etc., the work of Mr. Barlow, who is excellent in this kind from the life." We have many reasons to be grateful towards his brave pioneering. His Flemish contemporaries, Jan Fyt and Snyders, far and away more fortunate in their lot, were brought up within that magical atmosphere which Rubens and his school produced in Antwerp, while poor Barlow was mainly self- taught. He had to grow trees before he could make his own ladder. Horace Walpole did not look at Barlow from this point of view. He knew very little about him at first hand, and misunderstood what he found in Vertue's memoranda. Instead of quoting, he alters the words, and conveys a wrong impression : — " His taste lay to birds, fish and animals, in which he made great figure, though his colouring was not equal to his designs; consequently, which is not often the case, the prints from his works did him more honour than the works themselves, especially as he had the good fortune to have some of them engraved by Hollar and Faithorne." Had Walpole ever seen a picture by Barlow ? He did not refer to one, and his readers have assumed that Barlow must be regarded as a bad colourist. Generation after generation this assumption has been stolen by books of reference from Walpole, and circulated in several languages. It is to be found in German books, for example, and also in French. Walpole is not mentioned, so that each repetition looks like an independent judgment passed by a different critic. Is it surprising, then, that Francis Barlow has been neglected ? He must be liberated from Walpole before he can be judged from his own merits by writers of books of reference.^ Even the late Sir Walter Gilbey, in his volumes on animal painters, took far too much from Walpole, and scarcely anything from Barlow himself : — " His talents as a draughtsman were more remarkable than his skill as a colourist, hence his work appears in a more pleasing aspect through engravings and etchings, especially those by such gifted men as Hollar, Faithorne, and John Griffier, than in the original paintings themselves. The engravers indeed have placed him under an obligation in that they have so largely contributed 1 In 1843 the Biographie Universelle, after stealing from Walpole, became mournful in its^attitude towards Barlow's colour : " He lacked only this quality of art to be placed side by side with the greatest painters of animals; but his defect was all the more striking, because, in the genre which he had chosen, perfect imitation was the first of all beauties, and almost the only one of which it was susceptible." 28 BRITISH SPORTING ARTISTS to rescue his name as an artist from the obscurity which has overtaken his followers." Poor Barlow ! Thus to be knocked on the head because his paintings are hard to find, and because Walpole wrote in haste ! As a rule Barlow composed in monochrome for etchers and engravers. There are several score of his drawings in the British Museum, forming a treasury of affection for birds and beasts. More than this, what etching after his work has the qualities of his temperamental style ? Is there one equal to his own etching ? To my mind, and I write without bias, Barlow is his own best interpreter in prints. Griffier's technique is effective, but it turns Barlow into a different artist ; and Hollar's prints after the Civil War show that they were done very often as a routine in a tragic struggle against increasing poverty. I would not criticise so brave a man, a fine little master at his best; but it is untrue to say that he placed Barlow under an obligation. He never did more, and sometimes he did less, than collaborate with Barlow on equal terms. If there was any obligation at all it was granted by Barlow to the professional etchers, who needed subjects with a popular appeal, and who could not have been blind to the fact that, but for his work as a famous painter, he could have etched every one of the plates himself. There are prints after him by other men, including R. Stoop, J. Collins, John Smith, Robert Gaywood, Thomas Dudley (a poor imitator of Hollar), and Francis Place, a versatile and brilliant amateur whose prints after Barlow are often better than those of the professional etchers. His touch has a vivacity very near to Barlow's. Francis Place died at York in 1728, at the age of eighty-one, and Vertue noted his death with much respect, saying that his " works in painting, drawing and engraving, also mezzotint," were " deservedly esteemed by the curious and lovers of art." Vertue adds : — " In the latter part of his life, having means enough to live on, he passed his time at ease, being a sociable and pleasant companion much beloved by the gentry of those parts, having in his younger days been a noted sportsman, particularly for fishing; but time and a great age brought him to his grave." Then, as regards colour, it has taken me much research to come into touch with a few of Barlow's paintings. During the past five-and-twenty years I have seen an example here and there, more or less harmed by a picture " restorer " ; and Mr. John Lane has a small Barlow bought this year, and representing an attack on a poultry yard by a bird of prey. It is relined, and also somewhat overcleaned, the artist's signature being partly obliterated by spirits of wine; FRANCIS BARLOW AND CONTEMPORARIES 29 but, though injured, it is a bright and lively little piece, belonging to his first period. Lord Onslow has six very valuable Barlows at Clandon Park; and Mr. Tyrwhitt Drake, at Shardeloes in Amersham, owns an important number, all in need of delicate cleaning and thin varnish. There is a pretty large canvas of huge dead salmon in a landscape, with numerovis living birds; and its companion piece, dated 1668, represents an attack by two eagles on poultry and ducks. One of them flies off with a chick, while the other swoops down, and a farmyard cock tries to summon up enough courage to show fight for the second time. I have seen just enough of Barlow's painting to know that he is very important — and also variously important — as an English pioneer, keenly observant, vivacious in small pictures, and broadly decorative in ample canvases, as four at Clandon Park bear witness. These pictures, and two smaller ones, have been delivered down to Lord Onslow from John Evelyn's friend, Denzil Onslow, who had a fine estate at Pyrford. One of them is an excellent frieze-like picture twelve feet long, representing a small and mixed breed of dogs known in the seventeenth century as the Southern-Mouthed Hounds. They were very slow, and one of Barlow's friends, Richard Blome, described them vividly in The Gentleman s Recreation, so that Barlow's decora- tive picture, a very remarkable work, can be confirmed by written evidence. Every hound has a well-defined character in Barlow's free and broad hand- ling; and note that while the dogs' bodies prove that their ancestry was mixed, the heads have the family likeness of a settled breed. One hound is speckled, while another has legs that suggest a strain of dachshund. Barlow drew and etched the Southern hounds many times, but I never hoped to find a painting by him in which they would be studied completely, and almost, if not fully, life-size. There is also some decorative symbolism in the frieze that needs explanation. A hare is introduced to show that this very swift runner was chased by these hounds, like the slower fox; and we learn from Blome that Southern hounds, being too slow for good sport in an open country, were fit only for woodlands and hilly districts. So Barlow has introduced a tree and a bit of rising land, with hounds running heavily upwards. At the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, there is an original drawing by Barlow, which was etched in reverse by Hollar in 1671. It is a notable com- position of hare-hunting, and most of the hounds in it are repeated from the frieze that Barlow painted for Denzil Onslow. Partly for this reason the drawing has been reproduced for this book. Note also that the sportsmen are well sketched, and that the horses, with their dignified heads, look strong 30 BRITISH SPORTING ARTISTS enough to carry armoured knights into battle. The gate, too, is interesting : it appears so often in Barlow's designs that I call it the Barlow gate. The other large decorative pieces at Clandon Park are huge, measuring 13 ft. 3 in. by 9 ft. 2 in. They are hung on a lofty staircase, and it took five men with ladders to get them down when two were photographed for this book. One could not be moved, so a photograph was taken at a venture from the staircase head. It was easy to dust these old pictures, but they need varnish to restore their colour; then much better photographs can be taken. Their canvas has a strong texture and three strips of it are joined together horizontally to make a picture 9 ft. 2 in. high. One composition might be a cartoon for tapestry turned into a broadly handled oil-painting. The others, too, are not more pictorial than many tapestries of the period. Were they intended for ceiling decoration ? Well, a rectangular design for a ceiling needs corner balancing, as well as a composition that can be looked at with pleasure from below. These requisite things are not present in Barlow's paintings at Clandon Park. Two of them have a feeling for landscape that comes from Barlow him- self; it is not copied from a foreign master. And I believe that one represents a portion of Denzil Onslow's decoy, where John Evelyn watched some lively sport, and where he saw so many herons that he was astonished. Till I came upon this passage in Evelyn's Diary, I wished to find out where Barlow learnt so much about waterfowl. This painting has waterfowl in the foreground, and many others are in alarmed flight, for a large bird of prey has attacked one of them. Landscape and evening sky are treated spaciously, and have great value in the genesis of English country pictures. It seems to me that Turner and Constable would have praised Barlow as their forerunner. Lord Onslow tells me that one of these pictures, " After a Day's Fishing," let us call it, was painted over another work representing a fife-size horse; an outline of the horse can be seen when it is touched by a brilliant light. That is to say, the underpainting shows through the landscape composition, probably because the landscape has sunk in and needs varnish. It is most interesting to think of Barlow striving to paint a horse life-size, then losing heart, and confessing his defeat as a thrifty painter. Canvases were dear, and colours also. An ounce of ultramarine cost £% 1 according to Vertue. This picture is signed, and dated 1667. It is the one which could not be taken down without running too much risk. As a tapestry its composition and colour would be attractive. The foreground is uneven, and strewn with recently caught pike, eels, and other fish. There is a knoll from which a big FRANCIS BARLOW AND CONTEMPORARIES 31 tree grows, throwing out foliage in bold patterns against a sunset. To left of this tree is a glade, and on the right are headlands that dip down into a lake. Another tree, stripped of its bark by lightning, rises from a bank on the right-hand side, and two wood pigeons and three ravens are perched on its dead branches. Below is a life-size heron. On the other side of the picture a heron lifts itself heavily into flight, and a jay flies forward. Two magpies, attracted by the dead fish, are busy below the knoll. Though this decorative painting cannot yet be seen properly, its colour being sunk in, it impressed me by its breadth and by its powerful sincerity. As for the third large picture, it represents a farmyard, with peafowl, geese, turkeys, poultry, and a pigsty, through the door of which a boar thrusts his head. Behind there is a gabled building, and a sky lit with the afterglow of sunset, against which a hawk attacks a pigeon. Barlow does not preserve the same scale throughout this decorative picture, the great peacock dominating somewhat too much over the geese and turkeys.^ Ill Four phases of Barlow's art are within easy reach of London students : his own etchings, a large number of his monochrome designs, some of the books that he helped to illustrate, including many prints after his birds and beasts, and some of his sporting designs, such as his two coursing scenes, one in mezzotint by J. Collins, and the other an etching by Jean Griffier. These phases can be studied in the British Museum, partly in the Library, and partly in the Print Room. One important book, Edward Benlowes' Theophila, is not in the Library; but the Print Room has one of the original drawings, and three of the etched prints, besides the very fine portrait of Benlowes himself. Already, when this book appeared in 1652, Barlow had attached himself to birds and beasts. Theophila personifies the Soul, and is represented besieged by sins in the shape of wild beasts. She kneels and prays by a fountain with a cross before it; and behind, in the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve are being tempted and driven out. Their nude figures are lightly and neatly sketched. In another print an eagle is introduced, and as this bird appears often in Barlow's work, let me point out here that his fondness for eagles may have been connected with his lineage, for I find in Thomas Robson's The British Herald, published in 1830, that several old Barlow families have had eagles in their coats of arms : — • " Barlow, of Barlow, sa. an eagle displ. ar. membered or, standing, on the limb of a tree, raguled and trunked of the second." 1 Portions of this picture were etched by Francis Place. 32 BRITISH SPORTING ARTISTS " Barlow, Sheffield, granted in 1691, sa. two bars erm. on a chief indented per pale or and ar. an eagle displayed of the first. Crest, a Mercury's cap or, wings ar. thereon an eagle's head erased ppr. gorged with a collar erm." " Barloughe, or Barlowe, Lane, sa. an eagle displ. with two necks ar. armed or." " Barlow, Bath, Somerset, sa. an eagle, disp. with two heads ar. standing on a limb of a tree raguly and trunked fesseways, or, charged on the breast with a cross pattee fitchee gu. Crest, two eagles' heads, erased, ar." We pass on to Barlow's designs for Several! Wayes of Hunting, Hawking, and Fishifig, according to the English Manner, 1671, etched partly by Hollar, and partly (I believe) by one of Hollar's pupils, whose name is not given. Though two styles are to be noticed, the title-page mentions Hollar only. Hollar's prints are signed, and represent hare-hunting, river fishing, salmon fishing, angling, and the title-page. There are seven unsigned plates : otter-hunting, stag-hunting, fox-hunting, rabbit-catching, chasing buck with greyhounds, and three phases of hawking, herons, partridges and pheasants. Mr. Baillie-Grohman has attributed the etching of these plates to Barlow himself, " probably," though it is too mannered to be like his livelier touch and feeling. In Barlow's etchings, as in those by his friend Francis Place, " the hand of little employment hath the daintier sense." Hollar and his school etch for their daily bread, and are compelled by a very hard grapple for life to do overmuch. Nearly all that comes from Barlow in The Sever all Wayes of Hunting, Hawking and Fishing is good, and sometimes very good, the designs grow into significant shape and have a decorative animation, as though their artist wanted to do a set of panels for the tapestry workers at Mortlake ; but their realisation in etching does not respond heartily enough to their invention. The angling print, in a good impression, is perhaps the best of Hollar's little set, and his pupil attains the quality called " style " in his print after coursing buck with greyhounds. Barlow is ill at ease in stag- hunting; his work here is overcrowded. And another fact is to be noted. As a whole the designs are not episodes of sport, but epitomes in which the seventeenth-century attitude towards fishing, and hunting, and hawking is treated with ornamental freedom. Barlow seems to say : " Here are decorative compositions containing much more than we see at any moment of our day's enjoyment as hawkers, huntsmen, and fishermen. Magnify them till their foreground figures are as large as life, and you will see that I am thinking of a dozen large tapestries for one of our great English halls." SHOOTING ON THE WING: the earliest English Print. Designed by F. BARLOW, and etched by S. Gribelin for Richard Blome's " The Gentleman's Recreation.' 1686. Reproduced /rout a copy lent hv Messrs. Ellis, New Bond Si, OTTER HUNTING. Designed by F. BARLOW, and etched by N. YEATES, for hichard Blome s "The Gentleman s Recreation,' 1686 Rfpivdiu-.d /nnn a. cap)' lent i'y Messrs. Kibs, Knv Boiul St. FRANCIS BARLOW AND CONTEMPORARIES 33 Students should compare The Severall Wayes with the sporting prints to be found in Richard Blome's The Gentleman's Recreation, pubhshed in 1686, in two parts, and containing a vast amount of information. It is mainly a compilation, for Richard Blome seeks help from many quarters, and in Part II we find some of Barlow's designs, but harmed by inferior etchers. Two compositions bear his name, and seven or eight others are signed with his manner, I believe.^ Would that he had etched them himself ! Blome suffered from a fear of inevitable costs, and accepted some of the worst etching that novices could do, as in the racing print, which may have been designed by Francis Barlow, whose mind in 1686 was occupied with horse-racing, as we shall see. One print signed by Barlow is an Otter Hunt, facing p. 100, Part II., pretty well etched by N. Yeates. For several reasons it is better as a composition than his Otter Hunt in The Severall Wayes. Its landscape is larger and freer, and its otter belongs to the breed that we know to-day in England, while the other is a foreign variety, a much bigger creature with a large head, akin to the British Columbian giant, as Mr. Baillie-Grohman has observed. Was a foreign otter imported, and bred in some English rivers ? Could Barlow have seen, except in books on natural histor}% all of the foreign birds and beasts that he drew and etched } We must be diffident on this point, as not enough is known about the animals and birds imported by small ships into seventeenth- century England. Lord Onslow has two boldly painted pictures by Barlow, showing an ostrich and a cassowary, three-quarters life-size, with architectural and landscape surroundings, and both birds are evidently painted from nature. For a long time I did not know if he had an opportunity of making life- studies from an elephant, then a difficult animal for sailors to ship and to import. At last in The City Mercury for November 2nd, 1675, I came upon an amusing trade advertisement headed The Elephant, described as a " wonderful beast " and " this Famous Creature." A fine specimen had been " sent from East-India to the Right Honourable George Lord Berkley," who sold him " for two thousand pounds sterling," an enormous price in those days, and certainly a showman's gamble, for we are told that the elephant " is now to be seen at the White Horse Inn over against Salisbury Court in Fleet Street, at which place there is provided accommodation for the Nobility, Gentry, and Commonalty, for that purpose." 1 His design for one of the unsigned plates, " Hawking for Pheasants, 1684," is in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford : it is reproduced for this book. D 34 BRITISH SPORTING ARTISTS We can imagine how London flocked to see the Famous Creature, and how Barlow and other artists made drawings. If we read Barlow's prints and drawings as history, read them without bias, we cannot say at present that no foreign otter was bred in English rivers. Two varieties may have been protected then for sport ; but Mr. Baillie-Grohman implies that Barlow, a countryman in an age of agriculture, famous as early as 1656 for his rural and rustic pictures and etchings, did not know that his first otter-hunt was un-English, and that he corrected his mistake when he drew another for Richard Blome. I do not like to criticise Mr. Baillie-Grohman, but he is sometimes too rash when he makes a brief raid from foreign work into English. ' Another print in Blome's book signed by Barlow shows how hawks and spaniels were taught to work together. It is an attractive print in spite of the poor etching by A. Soly. The ring of spaniels lying around the hawk, and another episode in the middle-distance beyond the gate, bring vanished sporting customs very near to us. As for the unsigned compositions which may be attributed to Barlow, they range from shooting on the wing, pretty well etched by S. Gribelin, to " The Setting Dog and Partridge," very much harmed by Yeates. There is also a print showing how fowlers, from behind a stalking horse shot flying birds. Two hunting subjects, hares and stags, badly etched by J. Collins, are also in Barlow's manner, like three hawking episodes — partridges, pheasants, and herons. These five are noteworthy because similar subjects by Barlow are found in The Sever all Wayes, while the others place us on new ground. There is no earlier shooting on the wing in English prints, I believe. Partridge hawking in both books is associated with trees pretty well covered with leaves, such as we see in a genial autumn at the end of September, or later; and pheasant hawking also has leafed trees in The Severall Wayes, while in Blome the landscape is mid-winter without snow. Mr. Baillie- Grohman believes that leafless trees ought to have been put into all of these compositions, because foliage would give the game too much advantage over their pursuers ; but Barlow was a countrified artist of the seventeenth century, while his critic does not know, or has forgotten, that John Evelyn, when dining at Pyrford with Denzil Onslow on August 24th, 1681, was offered pheasants and partridges, as well as other game. Are English trees leafless on August 24th? Barlow must have known when game hawking began, and there must have been less danger of losing young hawks when trees were in leaf, particu- EAGLE ATTACKING POULTRY. F,v„, an EaHy Pu/ure/.,, fRf^HC\S BKHl.O\N Mousing to Joh„ Lane, Es,. EVENING: THE WOUNDED HERON. Painted by ABRAHAM HONDIUS, mezzotinted by J. WATTS. Rtp) oduccd /ro}ii a print lent by I^Icssrs. RivielL FRANCIS BARLOW AND CONTEMPORARIES 35 larly in the case of pheasants, which would fly from wood to wood, and not go too far in advance of their pursuers. Many spaniels and horsemen followed this old sport. And we must remember, too, that England, with her little hedged fields and her many small woods close together, cannot have been a good country for hawking at any season of the year, except here and there : and this point, and several others, are forgotten by Mr. Baillie-Grohman, who really seems to write with some ill-feeling towards Barlow. Blome says of Partridge Hawking that four or five couple of well-trained spaniels are necessary. More than this he seems to disapprove : " Their motion you are to follow on horseback with your hawk on your fist, so that you may be ready to cast her off upon their springing any. It is now the mode to go into the field with a cast or two of hawks, and about six or seven couple of good ranging spaniels, and when a covey is sprung, to cast them (i. e. the hawks and the dogs) all off at a time, which affords good diversion to the spectators. But in the opinion of some this way is not appoved of, as being designed rather to go out to kill what they can, than only for the sport." As for pheasant hawking, the earliest date for training young hawks is not given, but the best months for the sport are November, December and January, " after which time you must be preparing her {i. e. the hawk) for the Mew, that she may be early mewed to fly at the Field the next season for partridge." Partridge hawking, then, was earlier than pheasant. Altogether, Barlow's designs for game hawking, with their picturesque old costumes and their vanished customs, are history as well as lively design. Yet Mr. Baillie-Grohman is unattracted by them. Even when Barlow's editor or publisher makes a mistake in a title (as though an artist often away from London, painting ceilings with birds, and making easel-pictures, could superintend every detail), Mr. Baillie-Grohman says that the error " affords another instance that Barlow's reputation as a truthful delineator of Nature did not always rest on a sound foundation, for the antlers of the deer depicted by him are those of red deer and not of fallow deer." As greyhounds were the fastest dogs, they may have been used frequently to chase red deer. To suppose that Barlow, a professional student of animals, who worked at country seats, and travelled into Scotland, did not know the difference between red deer and fallow deer, is absurd; and if red deer had not been coursed by grey- hounds in his own experience of country life, he would not have introduced them into a design which would be seen by many persons before an etching after it appeared in printsellers' shops. London was a little place closely 36 BRITISH SPORTING ARTISTS surrounded by country; judges of sport were common among all classes; and there was much talk, as Blome's book proves, about the merits of different hounds. For these reasons I accept Barlow's evidence and believe that red deer as well as fallow were coursed by greyhounds. Barlow's publisher — or Barlow himself — describes a fox-hunting print popularly and in verse. Then Mr. Baillie-Grohman remarks, in a rather awkward sentence, that the present-day description would be : " Chopping a fox in covert, where after a fast run, thoroughly beaten, he crawled to ground." As a matter of fact, the fox looks outwitted, not thoroughly beaten, and neither horses nor hounds are distressed after a fast run. The hounds belong to the long-eared and blunt-headed Southern breed which Barlow painted for Denzil Onslow, and which Richard Blome regarded as too slow. Yet these clumsy dogs are still so fresh that they bound heavily up a slope after the fox, giving tongue vigorously, and showing that their run has lasted only a short distance. Deer were coursed in two ways. When the sport went from wood to wood, young hounds were thrown into a chosen covert to drive out the deer, and greyhounds outside the wood were not let slip till their keepers noticed a buck that was worth killing. But young dogs, being inexperienced, would follow all deer that they drove out. Barlow illustrates this point in his middle distance, while in the foreground greyhounds are held in slip while a deer bounds by. " If any deer come out that is not weighty," says Blome, " or a deer of anther, which is Buck, Sore [i. e. a buck in his fourth year], or Sorel [i. e. a buck in his third year], then do not slip your greyhounds that are held at the end of the wood where the deer is expected to come forth, which the keepers have good judgment to know. And if you mistrust that your grey- hounds will not kill him, then you may waylay him with a brace of fresh greyhounds." ^ Other information is added under Barlow's print, where a verse says among other things that " the keeper with his knife with speed makes in and there doth end the life." In Barlow's design for the death of a stag the knife is broad and long, almost a short sword. Altogether the Severall Wayes of Hunting, Hawking and Fishing should be studied, and side by side with Blome's book. Its prints set thought astir in many directions, inviting us to look at many old phases of country life set within a social atmosphere which has gone from the world for ever, like the seventeenth-century costumes. ^ Would greyhounds face a buck at bay and kill him ? 'II og TJ c E -i* O o c _l w CD ■o C c o 2 3 o ^ Ol g c -^ o Ol "a '-0 _i o 2 cc o *^ < 3 o i; CO to ^ CO 5 o (J) -!5 o w T3 1 z. ^^ c 3 < o O « a: u. X > >, OS •o « n CL 0) <, c o =3 O c 2 '^ tt) to c I ot Q. ^ •<^. 0) 3 O *. o CO ^ z '^ H ■o OJ ^ Z Ol h- £ < TJ i^ CL tu 3 CD > >>' ■JD h- j^ n ■" < ns cc Q. c C o C o o o o s: m UJ 73 OJ Q OJ o OJ .CL a> > c Q re o ■o oc E c < o n > c O 5 J ro cc O < V) g Ll o o _1 LU ■D oc I O < H _ICD FRANCIS BARLOW AND CONTEMPORARIES 39 down upon a male cat and tried to bear him away. The bird rose to some height, trying to hold his prey firmly between his talons; but soon trouble began. Tom fought gamely, gripping his teeth into the bird's neck, and stopping the upward flight. There was a tense moment of doubt, with a noisy fluttering of wings; then Tom and his attacker fell to earth together, struggling fiercely, and both were picked up by Barlow. Students of birds have said that golden eagles are particularly fond of cat-flesh, and will eat it in captivity when they are ill and leave other food untasted. I have spoken before about Barlow's liking for eagles, and in 1665-66 the artist had a place of business called The Golden Eagle, somewhere in New Street, near Shoe Lane. This fact is not to be found in books of reference, and yet it is advertised on a sub-title page very well etched by Barlow himself for the first edition of his JEsop's Fables. This very costly book was Barlow's own venture in publishing, so The Golden Eagle in New Street may have been a bookseller's shop, at which Barlow (or his wife) would sell his own prints and prints by his friends. The great engraver William Faithorne after his return from banishment, in 1650, sold prints for a time. New Street was burnt by the Great Fire soon after Barlow's j^sop was published, and his losses must have been heavy, including much in addition to stock copies of his new book. Happily his copperplates were rescued, for they were used again, retouched here and there and rebitten; first in 1687, with revised text, and verses by Aphara Behn; next in 1703; and then in a Dutch edition printed in French at Amsterdam, and dated 1714. Its title runs : " Les Fables d'Esope, et de plusieurs autres excellens Mythologistes, accompagnees du Sens Moral et des Reflexions de Monsieur le Chevalier Lestrange. Traduites de I'Anglois." Barlow's work is described as " drawn and etched in a skilful and picturesque manner," " with exquisite taste and a wise touch," his animals and birds forming " a work very useful to painters, sculptors, engravers, and other artists, and amateurs of drawing." The publisher, Etienne Roger, takes care to say that the book is published at his own expense ; so I have tried to find out from whom he bought the coppers etched by Barlow. In 1714 Barlow had been dead for about eleven years, and the history of his copperplates, if it could be discovered, would be most valuable. Alas ! my research here has drawn blank. The present book is unsuited for the bibliography of Barlow's ^sop in its four editions; but we must gather some useful biographical facts from the English ones. The second and third have thirty-one additional plates 40 BRITISH SPORTING ARTISTS representing episodes in i^sop's life, and raising the total number of etchings to 143. Three of the new plates are etched by Barlow himself, while the others are by a second-rate man named Dudley, whose touch is clumsily mechanical. To compare it with Barlow's is to pass from dull mechanism into a free style. In several of Dudley's plates there seem to be signs of Barlow's hand, as though the poor artist acts now and then in self-defence. As my aim is to give in outline all that I have learnt about the first English sporting artist, I must note now that one print in the set on /Esop's Life is the only known blot on Barlow's professional work. It appeals to that pruriency which reaction from Puritanism let loose, and which put some queer verses even into Herrick's Hesperides. Perhaps Barlow's offence may be accounted for by assuming that his losses from the Great Fire were of a crippling sort, and that he allowed himself to be overruled by business advisers. Even to-day booksellers never fail to advertise this nasty print when it has not been torn from a copy of the second or third edition.^ The edition of 1666 has the best impressions of the 112 fable-etchings. There is also a dedication, and an address to the reader, which have biographical value. Curiously, the famous man to whom the book is dedicated. Sir Francis Prujean, died in 1666, the year in which the book was published. He was distinguished as a physician, as a connoisseur, and as a musician; was knighted by Charles II in 1661, and two years later, when Queen Catherine had typhus fever, Prujean attended her, and to a cordial that he prescribed her recovery was attributed, according to Pepys. When composing a dedication to this patron. Barlow was obsequious and high flown, but he had reason to be anxious, for his book was a costly under- taking. " With great charge and trouble " he has published the Fables and ^sop's Life in three languages, English, French, and Latin, that the appeal may be " more universal "; and this means that he has to pay Thomas Phili- pott for the text in English, and Robert Codrington, M.A., for the Latin and French ; and his other costs being heavy. Barlow's agitation is easy to under- stand. He relates that he was " pressed on to this great Work, some years since, by the persuasion of a much-honoured Friend of mine, since dead, who conceived it to suit much with my fancy, as consisting so much of Fowl and Beasts, wherein my friends are pleased to count me most eminent in what I do. . . ." ^ Aphara Behn wrote a verse to be printed under this etching, as though her own sex could not be insulted by showing a girl asleep in a position that even playwrights of the period would not have described in words. FRANCIS BARLOW AND CONTEMPORARIES 41 One cause of anxiety when he wrote his preface appears to have been a question of tact. Was he not entering into professional competition with Hollar, Gaywood, and some other professional etchers whom he knew person- ally, and who had made prints after his designs and pictures ? To stir them into jealousy would do him no good. So he pretended that he did not see the merits of his own good work, describing himself as "no professional engraver or etcher, but a well-wisher to the art of painting." ^ He adds that design is all he aims at, and that he " cannot perform curious neatness without losing the spirit, which is the main." There may be some irony in this apology to the professional etchers, for the " curious neatness " of Hollar is often a defect, being too much like the minute elaboration that became a tradition in steel engraving. Barlow prefers lively suggestion, so he does not place his lines and touches too close together, and he tries to get his effects with a thrifty judgment. It amuses him greatly to seek for technical qualities that will suggest differences of hair, fleece, fur, and feather; and he is attracted also by differences of weight in solid things, like trees, stones, weather-worn timber, and the ground underfoot. It will be said that he has gaps in his handicraft, and some marks of a primitiveness as evident as Chaucer's archaic spellmg and accents. What then ? A pioneer is inevitably a forerunner. Barlow's defects are biographical, arising from the many hindrances that pressed upon him through his bad student days and long afterwards. It is a nut to crack how he acquired his knowledge of composition, and composition in its classical phases, so called. His figure designs in Sir Robert Stapylton's Juvenal, 1660, are certainly equal to those by Robert Streater and J. Bankers or Dankerts. What work could differ more than this from Barlow's inborn passion for country life and sport ? Imagine Landseer or Herring in the act of illustrating Juvenal. From whom did Barlow receive hints on classical composition ? After comparing his figure designs with those of senior artists among his contemporaries, it seems to me that his variety and his method are nearest to those of Francis Cleyn, a German artist in England, who was busy in many different ways, designing tapestries for Mortlake, painting one of the ceilings in old Somerset House, decorating the outside of Wimbledon House with frescoes, ornamenting Bolsover in Notts., and Stone Park in Northamptonshire, and Carew House in Parson's Green. That he was attracted also by sport is proved by a lively drawing that he made 1 His Address to the Reader. 42 BRITISH SPORTING ARTISTS for Ogilby's edition of Virgil, 1654, page 386, where he shows how a deer with garlanded antlers and neck is hunted. ^ In one difficult subject Barlow can be studied in friendly competition against Cleyn. i^sop among the Beasts and Birds is represented by Cleyn for John Ogilby's editions of the Fables, 1651 and 1665-68; and it is also Barlow's frontispiece for his own ^sop. Both artists do their best, and Barlow wins all along the line. V In 1670 a very singular commission came to Francis Barlow. Suppose Mr. G. D. Armour had been invited to design a hearse for the funeral of F.M. Lord Roberts, and to make drawings of a lying in state and of the funeral procession. A similar commission came to Barlow, for he designed a hearse for the magnificent funeral of George Monck, first Duke of Albemarle, and made some illustrative drawings which were engraved, then published as a curious long roll, with a title and a sort of frontispiece, very well designed. ^ There are twenty-two plates in all, and the title has the words, " F. Barlow invent," and " Ro"' White sculpsit." If Barlow composed them all, and he and White are the only artists named, he had many reasons to be amazed by the awful contrasts between the Democrat Death and the wonderful bedecked pomp and pride that reigned through three whole weeks, while " forty gentlemen of good families submitted to wait as mutes with their backs against the wall of the chamber where the body lay in state, for three weeks, waiting alternately twenty each day." I quote here from Walpole, who expresses astonishment. Several prints are impressive, but the body itself did not Ue in state through three weeks, for this episode is described as follows : " Prospect of the Chamber and Bed of State in which the Effigies of the Duke of Albemarle lay in Somerset House." Another description says : "A Prospect of the Hearse in which the Effigies of the Duke of Albemarle lay in State in the Abbey of Westminster." Further, when the draped coffin is taken in an open hearse through the streets to Westminster, an effigy of the Duke rests on the coffin's lid.^ 1 Cleyn was born about 1590, and died in 1658. Charles the First had great confidence in his judgment and skill. Barlow also did some work for Ogilby, as in a folio edition of JEsop. 2 In the Print Room of the B.M. these rare historic prints are carefully bound into a long volume. * Walpole says that a warrant from the Lord Chamberlain ordered Sir Christopher Wren to prepare timber for Barlow's hearse. As the hearse in Westminster Abbey, with its canopy, differs from the one shown in the street, this information is not enough. :■' ^ ^ S t -^ ^ -= ^ fc <: •■* o z >: ;: w s 3, S V . < o: U- >> CD 5 UJ 3 Si IT ^ o = "^ I~ "^ s _I ,^t^^^r -:R5 ?5 -<^.^S£^ tLlO i-co i *) tj. FRANCIS BARLOW AND CONTEMPORARIES 43 Why was Barlow associated with this great ceremony, and with its illus- tration ? The title says that the drawings were collected by Rouge-Dragon, Francis Sandford, and published by special command of Charles the Second. Another point is that Barlow had painted a famous portrait of Monck. It was engraved twice : in line for Peter Stent, a sharkish printseller who treated artists badly; and in mezzotint by William Clarke. Both engrav- ings are very scarce. At South Kensington there is a good impression of the print pubhshed by Stent, " dedicated to the Hon. and Eminent Virtuoso William Clarke, Esq., Barrister of the Inner Temple, and Chief Secretary to the Illustrious George Duke of Albemarle." Monck is in military costume, and wears a wide collar; his right hand rests on a helmet, and the left on his hip ; his bold and expressive face, well drawn and modelled, in a three-quarters view, is relieved by long hair. The Restorer of the Monarchy was understood by Barlow, and by the engraver also.^ One cannot help thinking that Albemarle respected his chosen portraitist, and that Barlow was friendly with Rouge-Dragon, Francis Sandford, and with William Clarke. In any case, it is odd to place our earliest sporting artist among designers of hearses, and illustrators of magnificent obsequies. Seventeen years later he invented the first racing print. On a plate 30 in. long by I if in. wide he etched amusingly the last horse-race that Charles the Second attended at Dorset Ferry, near Windsor Castle. It was run on August 24th, 1684; and another inscription says : — " Drawn from the Place AND Designed BY Francis Barlow 1687." This date has caused some critics to suggest that Barlow may not have seen the race in 1684, but the date 1687 refers, surely, to the time of publication. 1 Thomas Dodd speaks of " a masterly etching " by Barlow of the Duke of Albemarle, " in military costume, from a picture painted by himself, large 4to. It is extremely rare. As the print does not carry his name in such a way as to express anything more than that he [Barlow] painted the picture from which it is taken, it has been erroneously ascribed to Gaywood, which it evidently is not, as it is etched with more delicacy in the execution than that of Gaywood's style, and is in coincidence with what we know to be of Barlow's real production. . . ." 44 BRITISH SPORTING ARTISTS Besides, the landscape is a very important part of the composition, and if Barlow drew it from Nature in 1687, showing a glimpse of river and Windsor Castle on our right, a great crown of masonry resting upon its head- land, he did no more than show his habitual carefulness. He was never tired of taking pains. And another point is that his print was published as a commemoration, a new and original memento of the delight in sport which Charles the Second had shown often at Dorset Ferry and at Newmarket. A faked scene would have offended sportsmen ; and for this reason we may assume that Barlow made notes when the race was run, sketching the coach and six and its bodyguard, the quaint little wooden grand stand on our right, and groups of favoured onlookers, and four horses making their start watched by the King from the timber shanty. Charles wears his hat and his ribbon of the Garter. Two figures more in the stand wear hats, so they must be members of the Royal family. Under the print are four verses (perhaps by Barlow as " Lover of the Muses "). A jingling prophecy is made in the last one : — " And Dorsett ever celebrated be For this last honour which arriv'd to thee, Blest for thy Prospect, all august and gay. Blest for the memory of this glorious day, The last great Race the Royal Hero view'd, O Dorsett to thy much lov'd plains he ow'd. For this alone a lasting name Records thee in the Book of Fame." As a matter of fact, Charles the Second watched a later race, but at New- market, as Sir Theodore Cook points out in his invaluable history of the English Turf. The racehorses in this earliest print of the sport are primitive. All through his life Barlow struggled gamely against the difficulty of drawing horses, but his improvement was never supple and at ease. He would have drawn very well such a broken-down old horse as Morland, his aftercomer, would put into several sporting pictures, or as Don Quixote would choose as an understudy for Rocinante. Now and then, as in his design for coursing deer, he modelled a horse with a sculptor's touch and feeling ; but although he admired greatly the contrast between the " bone " in horses and the suppleness and energy, he was generally stiff in his handhng. But he was never thin and shallow. His horses have weight avoirdupois, and they stand on solid ground. In his racing print he had so many new difficulties to face that we must not " crab " his results. To say the first words in any great subject is an FRANCIS BARLOW AND CONTEMPORARIES 45 achievement, and it was honour enough to discover a new field for artists to work in — the racecourse and its permanent attraction in pictures and prints. Some of Barlow's sporting scenes are to be found in John Ogilby's Britannia, that shows in bold and effective maps what British roads were like in the year 1675. Hills and heights are made so evident that a present-day cartographer might regard them as indiscretions against an elusive craft which our subalterns between 191 4-1 91 8 often found too secretive. Who would expect to find Barlow's ideas of sport in a book of this sort, compiled and edited by " His Majesty's Cosmographer, and Master of His Majesty's Revels in the Kingdom of Ireland " ? The maps and things were printed, then bound into a ponderous folio, at Ogilby's own house in Whitefriars, where no end of curious things were discussed by the chief and his hard-working staff. Barlow had no more interesting friend than John Ogilby, whose passion for book production was keener even than his own.^ Many maps are decorated with vignettes of country work and sport designed by Barlow, and the frontispiece also is designed by him, and Hollar does the etching. Travellers on horseback leave a fortress on our left and begin to ride down a slope to a pleasant bridge ; then they will go up a hilly and curving road through a countryside close by the sea. Ships are visible far off; in the middle distance sportsmen ride after a buck in a meadow ; and Ogilby himself is in the foreground, studying mapped roads at a table, and surrounded by mapping instruments and his staff. From Ogilby we pass to another friend of Barlow, Dr. Wilkins, a cele- brated preacher who rose to be a bishop of Chester. On February 19th, 1656, he introduced John Evelyn to Barlow, and Evelyn put this fact into his diary : " Went with Dr. Wilkins to see Barlow, the famous painter of fowls, beasts and birds." This visit encouraged the artist so much that he tried to win Evelyn as a patron, a sort of hunting in which he was likely to draw blank. He would send an etched print after Titian, with a dedication full of courtship, and a letter written with horrible trouble from a bookseller's shop, " The Black 1 It got him into trouble, this passion, costs of production being much heavier than they are to-day. In 1664 Ogilby advertised a scheme for a lottery, with tickets at forty shilhngs each, and several of his books as prizes ; and after his Britannia was published other financial difficulties must have arisen, for The London Gazette (April 9-12, 1677) has an advertisement announcing the General Sale of Mr. Ogilby's books, and a large map of London, with several advantages to those that enter their names at given addresses and receive tickets. 46 BRITISH SPORTING ARTISTS Boy," near St. Dunstan's in Fleet Street. The letter is dated December 22nd, 1656. It brings us very close to Barlow and his early struggles, and it would bring us much closer if Evelyn's editors had published it without correcting its spelling. Only one example of the spelling is given in a footnote, and it recalls to memory the fact that some of Barlow's etchings have peculiar etched titles, introducing us to " wild dookes," " peacokes," " gease," " patriges," " feasonts," " turkeyes," and " woodecokes." The funnily spelt letter and the etching were sent by a messenger to John Evelyn, and Barlow's appeal, with the answer he received, will be found in Evelyn's Correspondence. It is a stingy answer, an example of wordy evasion. Barlow explains that the proof etching is not entirely his own, partly because he has not had enough spare time to finish it, and partly because a friend of his, Mr. Robert Gaywood, " desires his name might be to it for his advantage in his practice, so I consented to it. The drawing after the original painting I did, and the drawing and outhne of this plate. I finished the heads of both the figures, and the hands and feet, and likewise the dog and the landscape." Yet some experts have placed this print among Gaywood 's etchings ! Ex- pertism is a fenland with some pathways through its many swamps. ^ An etching of a famous picture by Gaywood and Barlow, however imperfect, should have been accepted by Evelyn without ado ; but he was not in a good mood. To be invaded at Christmas by a couple of young artists who wanted a new patron 1 The good man, taken by surprise, and feeling ill at ease, dodged into startled modesty, and beat a dignified retreat, like a dowager duchess offended by the advances of a Charles the Second : — - "Sir, " I had no opportunity by the hand which conveyed it, to return you my acknowledgments for the present you lately sent me, and the honour which you have conferred upon me, in no respect meriting either so great a testimony of your affection, or the glorious inscription, which might better have become some great and eminent Maecenas to patronise, than a person so incompetent as you have made choice of. If I had been acquainted with your design, you should on my advice have nuncupated this handsome monu- ment of your skill and dexterity to some great one, whose relation might have been more considerable, both as to the encouragement and the honour which you deserve." ^ The picture chosen by Barlow had been in Charles the First's collection, and George Vertue describes the print after it as " A Venus couchant and a man playing on an organ. Titianus pin. Barlow dedicat et delin. To Mr. John Eveljm. Gaywood sculpt. 1656." So Vertue did not know that Barlow etched and finished a full half of this plate. HARE-HUNTING. From an Original Drawing by FRANCIS BARLOW in the Ashmolean Museum. Etched in reverse by HOLLAR. 1671, These hounds reappear in Barlows fine painting at Clandon Park. PARTRIDGE STALKING. From an Original Drawing by BARLOW in the British Museum. Engraved by J. KING- Compare this design with Wootton s picture of Partridge Stalking. FRANCIS BARLOW AND CONTEMPORARIES 47 The retreat has begun. Its continuation, written in the same rotund style from Sayes Court, two days before Christmas, nods and bows in a stately manner : — " From me you can only expect a reinforcement of that value and good esteem which, before, your merits had justly acquired, and would have per- petuated : of another you had purchased a new friend ; nor less obliged the old, because less exposed him to envy; since by this you ascribe so much to me that those who know me better will on the one side be ready to censure your judgment, and, on the other, you put me out of all capacity of making you requital. But since your affection has vanquished your reason so much to my advantage, though I wish the election were to make, yet I cannot but be very sensible of the signal honour, and the obligation which you have put upon me. I should now extol your courage in pursuing so noble an original, executed with so much judgment and art : but I forbear to provoke your modesty, and shall in the meantime that I can give you personal thanks, receive your present as an instance of your great civility, and a memorial of my no less obligation to you. . . ." What a rigmarole ! An invitation for a week's sketching at Sayes Court would have been much easier to compose. Writers on Barlow have forgotten to consult John Evelyn. They have preferred to repeat what Horace Walpole says. Perhaps Evelyn was hurt in his pride of class by Barlow's experimental spelling, one sample of which is published by Evelyn's editor, William Bray, F.S.A., 1852, vol. iii, p. 81 : — " As caching (i. e. etching) Is not my profeshion, I hope you will not exspect much from me. S', if you shall be pleased to honner my weake (yet willing) endeavours with your exseptation, I shall ever rest obliged for this and former favours." Funny spelling and punctuation are to be found, of course, in other letters of the period; but Barlow may have been self-educated. He had a great desire to be a learned man, since he put Latin and French into his Msop's Fables, and allowed Latin titles to be placed on some books of prints after his designs, as though English would be out of place when he asked his countrymen to buy etchings of birds and landscapes. Besides all this, he worked pretty often with learned men, so that his freakish spelUng has biographical interest. It may have shocked John Evelyn, for breaches of form have been as irritating to many men as intentional slights. 48 BRITISH SPORTING ARTISTS VI Sport being drama in varied action, artists need a keen dramatic sense when they represent vigorous and hazardous sports of the field and forest. Has Barlow this essential quality ? Yes, now and then, in ways of his own. His hunted beaver by the riverside looks round suddenly upon his pursuers with a movement of natural drama that is memorable. Sometimes the drama miscarries; it does in the stag-hunting design; but it has fine moments, passing with expressive freedom from a farmyard cock on the point of admitting defeat in collapsed feathers, to a vagabond who lies dead against a bank below a wood, through the undergrowth of which a deer looks out. In our own times a similar etching was made by Alphonse Legros, who called it "La Mort du Vagabond; " and the resemblance between his print and Barlow's has not yet been recorded. Legros may have been introduced to Barlow's Msop's Fables by one of his many English pupils, perhaps Holroyd or Strang. In any case this matter is worth noting. Though Barlow from time to time had a deep feeling for the strife and pain that accompany all animate things, he borrowed no hints of intense and impetuous realism from Flemish sporting pictures, which were fairly well known in England. Rubens, Fyt and Snyders believed that the main thing in hunting was — not the exercise of good horsemanship, but — the final grapple for life or death. They painted a battle at its climax, between hounds and a boar or a bear or a wolf, and sometimes they showed that the hunted animal was very near to victory. It seemed to them inevitable that some hounds should be mauled and killed. The yearning to express dramatic power and action became so intense among the Antwerp masters that even boar hunts and bear hunts were deemed too commonplace at last, and another ideal of perilous hunting was introduced. Rubens and Fyt painted lion hunts; Snyders added tigers, and crocodiles, and the hippopotamus, as though little Belgium had won for herself a far- scattered empire. John Ruskin hated these Flemish sporting pictures. In his Academy Notes for 1875, when praising a picture by S. J. Carter, he said : " And I thankfully, and with some shame for my generally too great distrust of modern sentiment, acknowledge that there is a real element of fine benevolence towards animals in us, advanced quite infinitely, and into another world of feeling, from the days of Snyders and Rubens." But to write in this way is to forget several essential things. It is absurd to put S. J. Carter by the side of Rubens FRANCIS BARLOW AND CONTEMPORARIES 49 and Snyders, whose delight in tremendous physical courage and strength is itself heroic sportsmanship. Carter, like Barlow, felt drama differently; and it is in Shakespeare that we find the beginning of that benevolence towards animals which Ruskin attributed to his own generation. Shakespeare loved horses tenderly, and his fondness for hares caused him, in " Venus and Adonis," to condemn hare-hunting. Only one painter in England among Barlow's contemporaries put abundant and impetuous drama into sporting pictures. It was Abraham Hondius, a Dutchman, who came to London about 1666, and who died about 1695 near Water Lane, Fleet Street, in a neighbourhood called Blackmore's Land. In 1729 Lord Derby bought a large Stag Hunt by Hondius, measuring 7 ft. 6 in. by 10 ft. 5i in.; and Sir George Scharf writes of it as a powerful composition relieved by a sunset, " originally extremely fine," but " now darkened by time into heavy red-brown shadows. The painting of the animals justifies the remark of Horace Walpole, that his {i. e. Hondius 's) manner seemed his own; it was bold and free, and, except Rubens and Snyders, few masters have painted animals in so great a style." Walpole got his admiration from George Vertue, who praises several pictures by Hondius, two or three of bull-baiting ,1 and a famous " Dog Market," with " dogs of all sorts and kinds, extremely natural." Above on steps are some people, men and women, who show " his skill in humane {sic) figures. Not very correct, but an easy pencil." The steps run across the picture making a dark horizontal line, and Vertue dislikes the effect. Sir Robert Walpole, at Houghton in Norfolk, had three large hunting pieces by Hondius, dated 1674. Hondius himself, so Vertue says, was " a man of humorous disposition. He frequently said other men's goods might as well be used as his own, which sentiment he fulfilled when he found another man's wife of the same mind, and therefore came over to England with her, to prove in time by experience how much he was wrong or right. With her as a housewife he lived in London till she died, then married another. ... He was an excellent painter, portraits, ruins, candlelight pieces, horses, stag huntings, and bear fighting." In another place Vertue adds : " In all these kinds his colouring was often extravagant, and his draught as commonly incorrect. He delighted much in a ^ Under the date 1728, for example, Vertue says : " To be sold a fine high-finished piece of bull-baiting, a capital picture painted by Hondius. His name wrote on the collar of a dog towards the left of the picture. 3 ft. by 2 ft. 6 in. longways. This rather more finished than the famous Dog Market. . . ." E 50 BRITISH SPORTING ARTISTS fiery tint, and a harsh way of pencilling, few of his pictures being without this distinguishing mark; his paintings are easy to be known. The dogs and huntings he drew are in good request, though some of his later performances are careless, he being for many years afflicted with the gout so severely that he had prodigious swellings, and chalk-stones in most of his joints, the effects of a sedentary and irregular life. ..." In reading Vertue's criticisms we must remember that he admired the bad school of Verrio and Laguerre. Hondius was a very useful influence, with his bold and frank realism ; and he knew a good deal about anatomy when English- men depended wholly on observation. It is odd that sportsmen do not value him more than they do. Another contemporary of Barlow's declining years was an Englishman, Marmaduke Cradock, erroneously called Luke Cradock by most books of reference ; born about 1660 at Somerton in Somersetshire. At a date unknown he came to London, where he was apprenticed to a house painter, and served his time in this trade. Afterwards he had no master in art but his own genius, " which in process of time," says Vertue, " distinguished him for one of the best painters of birds and beasts of all his contemporaries. He acquired a very masterly manner, his composition being natural and free, a ready imita- tion of nature in a broad style for pencilling and force of colouring. He was very commendable." Barlow had a varied influence over Cradock. Indeed, but for Barlow's pioneering Cradock's lot would have been a very poor one. Most of his pictures were painted for dealers, not because he liked these tradesmen, who paid him by the day, but because he did not care to work for noblemen and gentlemen, believing that they would make him wait their pleasure, and would never allow him the freedom that he enjoyed with other persons. After his death, which occurred in 171 7, the market value of his work rose rapidly, and it is well worth — though it does not yet receive — the present-day respect of sports- men. Cradock, indeed, with some beautiful qualities of his own, develops two or three phases of Barlow's pioneering; but Barlow remains the superior artist. The more closely we follow Barlow through his versatile appeals the more his value as a brave pathfinder will be appreciated. To find more and more of his paintings, and to see them all freed from deposits of old brown dust, this is the first useful thing to be desired ; and let us hope that his etchings and his drawings, after more than two centuries of unmerited neglect, will become known to an ever-increasing number of art students. Versatile as he is — and circumstances caused him to do overmuch in too many diff'erent ways M -. OJ Si 5z LUq <5 FRANCIS BARLOW AND CONTEMPORARIES 51 — it is as a delineator of English country life, with seventeenth-century sports, that he is nearest to us; and surely his racing print, and other examples of his enterprise, should be republished full-size in good photographs and photo- gravures. Then collectors will be able to begin at the beginning when they try in a few chosen prints to trace the development of English sport in art from the Caroline times to the proofs in colour which have been published recently after Mr. A. J. Munnings. As I am rediscovering Barlow, I have pitched my praise in a low key, believing that readers would say : " This writer, after so much research, cannot be impartial." But some quite neutral critics of art who have seen photographs of Barlow's pictures at Clandon Park admit gladly that a new master has been added to the first period of English painting. Able composition runs through all of his happiest efforts ; and it is generally dignified and also decorative. No other English sporting painter and etcher has such variety as an able designer. CHAPTER II PETER TILLEMANS : 1680 ( ? )-I734 I He was the son of a diamond-cutter in Antwerp. His father's handicraft, with its delicacy and its minute precision, may have influenced the boy's artistic preferences, for he kept away from the manly, swaggering school which Rubens had bequeathed to his country, and gave his affection partly to Flemish painters who loved crisp and profuse detail, like Velvet Breughel (1568-1625), and partly to such later men as the younger David Teniers, who died in 1690. In 1708 an English picture-dealer named Turner visited Antwerp, and while hunting for spoil that he could sell in England at a handsome profit, he noticed the young work both of Peter Tillemans, and also of Peter Casteels, who was Tillemans' brother-in-law. I have tried to find out where this man Turner lived, and if he may be looked upon as the grandfather of J. M. W. Turner. As a rule genius has a pedigree, and the greatest genius in English art needs an ancestor with a liking for art. From his mother — a masculine small woman who passed through fierce ill-temper into madness — J. M. W. Turner did not inherit art; and this applies also to his father, the talkative, cheery, parrot-nosed little barber who plied his trade in Maiden Lane, a dark, narrow street in Covent Garden. That English painting should have received a Shakespeare among artists from these parents and this bad environment is very wonderful. One would be glad to say that Turner's paternal grandfather was a man of artistic tastes, who went abroad hunting for new artists, and even brought to England two young men from Antwerp, after choosing them with dis- crimination. Unluckily, my research has drawn blank, and the dealer Turner remains a surname only. Casteels was a good choice. He had talent as a painter of dead game, and of living poultry, ducks, and peafowl, so he carried on one important phase of Barlow's pioneering. It is said that, besides painting easel-pictures, he was employed to decorate ceilings, overmantels, and other household 52 PETER TILLEMANS: i68o(?)-i734 53 things. Charles ColUns and Marmaduke Cradock did similar useful work, helping to gratify that liking for bird life that British sportsmanship has protected by Acts of Parliament. But one piece of evidence suggests that Peter Casteels was not a great success, like Peter Tillemans. Thirty-two years after he arrived in England a large picture of his was catalogued at Knowsley Hall, and the price paid for it was only £2 ^°^- I* ^^ ^^ oblong picture painted on a canvas 44I in. by 64 in.; and represents peafowl, white poultry, and some other birds, with a distant view of a country house and trees. Another Casteels at Knowsley, a square upright, 50 in. by 40I in., is described as follows : " To the right, ducks swimming; a distant farmhouse in the centre of the picture. Small birds are perched on a tree in the upper left-hand corner." ^ Much higher prices were paid for Tillemans' work. Four little landscapes in water-colour by Tillemans (7J in. by loj in.), catalogued at Knowsley in 1736, and called " The Season of the Year," cost £40, a sum about equal to ^(^280 in our purchasing values. The same year Lord Derby paid fifteen guineas each for two horse-portraits by John Wootton, measuring about 40 in. by 37 in. It is not known whether Casteels and Tillemans remained friends, or drifted apart; but Casteels outlived his famous brother-in-law, dying in 1749 at Richmond, just a dozen years after he gave up painting and began to design for a firm of calico-printers at Tooting. Casteels made one attempt to rival Barlow as an etcher, publishing twelve plates of birds and poultry, which he finished in 1726. As long as Tillemans worked for Turner he painted vdth success copies of popular masters, notably after Teniers, and also after Jacques Courtois, known as le Bourguignon, a French battle-painter (1621-1676). Three copies after Courtois, by Tillemans, are catalogued by Sir George Scharf ; and they help us to understand how Tillemans gained that knowledge of horses and figure painting which in a few years would place him by the side of Wootton as a graphic historian of Newmarket. Between his copies and his racehorse period, Tillemans did a great deal of other work that country gentlemen valued; and he rose in their esteem so rapidly that his tact and manner must have had much natural charm. The portrait of him in Walpole shows a gentle, friendly, almost girlish face, with long curling hair, which does not look formal enough for a dressed wig. Three 1 Sir George Scharf, K.C.B., Descriptive and Historical Catalogue of the Pictures at Knowsley Hall, 1875. 54 BRITISH SPORTING ARTISTS Earls were among Tillemans' patrons, Spencer, Derby and Portmore; four Dukes, Devonshire, Somerset, Rutland, and Bolton ; and many Lords, including William Lord Byron, to whom he gave drawing lessons, and for whom he painted several views of Newstead Abbey. Lord Byron was a clever pupil, and two of his children. Lady Carlisle, and the Rev. R. Byron, were cleverer. Indeed, the clergyman copied Rembrandt's etchings so well that a print of his after the famous " Three Trees " is reputed to have deceived connoisseurs. In any case Tillemans was not unhappy in his pupils. Painting views of country seats, often enlivened with sporting episodes, was a pleasant experience, and it kept him busy for a long time. A fine view of Chatsworth is preserved there, for instance; and at South Kensington, in the Victoria and Albert Museum, you will find a park scene with deer and huntsmen. Tinted lightly with water-colour, in what is known as the earlier " stained manner," it has much value in the history of J. M. W. Turner's predecessors. On our right, some two hundred yards away, are a couple of huntsmen with hounds, one dressed in pink, the other in light brown. On our left is a distant castle ; a great clump of trees in the middle distance gives a central plot of darkish colour to the composition; deer are placed in alert attitudes upon the smooth green turf neighbouring the trees; and in the foreground a little stream is crossed by a rude hand-bridge, and a black-and- white dog laps the water. It is a drawing made partly with gouache; that is to say, partly with opaque pigments which have been ground in water and mingled with a preparation of gum. Some chemical change has altered the colour, but the very careful, plodding handicraft remains. It has no breadth, and no assurance of touch, so the drawing belongs to Tillemans' first period in topographical work. Tillemans, then, like Barlow, was among the first artists in England who employed water-colour upon drawings taken from country life. If you turn to Mr. H. M. Cundall's book, British Water-Colour Painting, you will find among the many colour-plates a sedulous tinted sketch by Tillemans of Newmarket and its Heath, with many horses galloping, and many walking. Newmarket lies on our left in the middle distance, and on our right is Warren Hill, with five horses testing their wind at full rocking- horse gallop. Across about four-fifths of the foreground, there are three separated lines of horsemen, with some men on foot. The horses are portraits, but no key is given. As a rule the horse-portraiture in Tillemans' Newmarket scenes has a provoking interest, because names cannot now be given to the racehorses. Mr. Cundall says that this water-colour measures 36! in. by 11 J in. : a HUNTING: Left-hand portion of a long etching by PETER TILLEMANS. Fr,„„ a /,,.,,/ let hy ■'/■ ■ ' ■ Bcrthd. PETER TILLEMANS: i68o(?)-i734 55 large tinted drawing for its period. " Although it may be classed as a topo- graphical drawing, it is executed in a free style with washes of colour." There are no grey tints, and no outlines with a pen : and its technique is better than that of English draughtsmen who were busy as topographers from 1704 to 1734, Tillemans' death-year. For this reason our Anglo-Fleming is really an important person in the history of early English water-colour. About eleven years after his arrival in England Tillemans was engaged by John Bridges to make drawings for a projected History and Antiquities of Northamptonshire; and more than five hundred were made in Indian ink. He received a guinea a day, and lived as a guest with Bridges. Much later Tillemans was retained by Dr. Cox Macro, a chaplain to King George the Second; and it was in Macro's house, Little Haugh Hall, at Norton, near Bury St. Edmunds, that he died suddenly, December 5th, 1734, after suffering for many years from asthma. On the previous day he was busy on a horse portrait. Tillemans was buried in the churchyard of a neighbouring parish, Stow- langtoft, and its register described him as Peter Tillemans of Richmond. Dr. Macro had a bust of his friend by Rysbrach, and placed it in a niche at the top of the staircase in Little Haugh Hall. The bust has disappeared, but an inscription remains : Tillemansio suo Rysbrachiiis} I do not know how long Tillemans lived at Richmond, but Vertue says that Richmond was chosen because of the painter's asthma ; and another interesting reference to Richmond was written in 1824 by Dr. John Evans : — " In the collection of Archdeacon Cambridge there was a view of Rich- mond Hill, interesting not only as one of the best works by the master Tille- mans, but from the accuracy with which it represents every object seen from that much admired spot near a century ago. It was painted from the house in which Tillemans lived, for his patron. Lord Radnor, whose house at Twickenham is introduced, also the portraits of some of the principal persons then resident in the neighbourhood, particularly that eccentric character Lady Wortley Montagu on her favourite horse on which she hunted with the staghounds in Richmond Park." This quotation should be considered side by side with three prints after Tillemans in the British Museum. The first one is " A General View of Richmond from Twickenham Park, after a beautiful Painting in the Earl of Radnor's Gallery at Twickenham "; P. Benazeck, Sculpt.; and published by Thomas Jefferys on October ist, 1755. It differs greatly in style from the 1 M. H. Cundall's research. 56 BRITISH SPORTING ARTISTS hard and formal " Prospect of the Town of Stanford from Parsons Green," drawn by Tillemans in 171 9, and stiffly etched by G. Vander Gucht. The third print is etched by J. Wood, and gives " The View from One-Tree Hill in Greenwich Park." An inscription speaks of the original picture as being " in the collection of the Rt. Honble. the Earl of Radnor." The print was pubUshed by A. Pond, August loth, 1744; it measures 48 in. by 28 in., and is thus important in size. As an example of early English topography, it is very well composed, and so entertaining that it is not spoilt by Wood's excessive industry, which has a nagging elaboration. Wood is one of those craftsmen who cannot see the difference between doing and overdoing. It would be a " find " to come upon the picture from which Wood made this print. Then we should see Tillemans at his best when he painted in oil-colours a great landscape stretching before and around a fine display of architecture. A year before his death, when his health was failing, Tillemans decided that he would sell by auction a little collection of pictures that he had formed, together with a good many examples of his own work. Happily a catalogue of this auction is in the British Museum, bound up with a few others belonging to the same period. Its title says that " Mr. Peter Tillemans, Painter, who is retiring into the country on account of his ill State of Health," has collected abroad several pictures by the most eminent Masters, " which will be sold by Auction on Thursday and Friday the 19th and 20th of April, 1733, at Mr. Cock's in the Great Piazza, Covent Garden. The paintings may be viewed ... on Saturday the 14th of April, and every day after, Sunday excepted, till the hour of sale, which will begin each day at 11 in the forenoon precisely." At the end of the first day some big names appear in this catalogue : — 63. " St. Sebastian by Van Dyck, when he first came from Italy." 64. Landscape by Gaspar Poussin. 65. Landscape by Nicolas Poussin. 66. " A Woman's Head, very fine, by Rembrandt." 67. Landscape and Figures, by David Teniers. 78. Cartoon by Raphael. On the second day Tillemans takes great pride in four lots. A " Turkish Pasha," by Rembrandt, is " a very capital picture"; a Claude Lorrain is "a large and capital landskip "; and a Gaspar Poussin, " Pyramus and Thisbe," is also " very capital," like a David Teniers representing " The Gallery of the Archduke of Austria." PETER TILLEMANS: i68o(?)-i734 57 A good many copies are in this auction, and as they are plainly marked as copies, it is clear that Tillemans himself had no doubt at all that the pictures he advertised as genuine, and submitted to the public criticism through four days, were by the masters whose names he published. Yet Mr. Baillie-Grohman smiles mockingly over this auction, as though he knew more about the pictures in its lots than Tillemans. " Numerous ' landskips ' of his (/. e. of Tillemans') and ' A Horse-Race at Nevraiarket,' are judiciously interspersed with cartoons alleged to be by Raphael, Vandyck, Rembrandt, Teniers, and Poussin. Unfortunately, history does not relate what prices these treasures fetched." Only one cartoon is in the catalogue, and numerous landskips by Tillemans are not interspersed with pictures by foreign masters, whose names are found all together at the end of each day's programme. And why should anyone suggest that an artist of reputation collected spurious pictures and put them on sale at the best auction rooms in London ? As Mr. Baillie-Grohman says very little about sporting artists in England, I regret very much that he provokes criticism whenever his book makes a little raid upon us from the Continent. A writer on old artists should try to keep in touch with the prices paid at different periods for pictures and prints. To jeer at Tillemans' little collection is very absurd when we remember that another painter, Charles Jarvis, had so many and such various works of art that his auction lasted in all thirty-three days. It began on Tuesday the nth of March, 1739-40, at the dead painter's house in Cleveland Court, St. James's. It comprised forty years of collecting, and its lots are most interesting to read. If Tillemans collected fakes and frauds he must have been a superlative fool, unable to learn anything about styles even by making and selling very good copies after popular masters. By selling copies he could pay for the original paintings that he bought, and prices at auctions between the Great Civil War and the reign of George the Third were not as a rule high. Take the sale that was ordered by commissioners appointed by the Long Parliament. For a score of masterpieces by Raphael, Giorgione, Correggio, and Titian, now treasured at Madrid, Dresden, and elsewhere, the prices paid scarcely amounted to ;(^300, or about £2,100 in present-day money. The seven large cartoons by Raphael, now at South Kensington, were valued by the com- missioners at ;{^300, and Cromwell bought them at this price for the Nation. For a long time they remained in a lumber-room at Whitehall, till a great foreigner, William the Third, commanded Sir Christopher Wren to build a room for them at Hampton Court. This being the EngUsh attitude towards 58 BRITISH SPORTING ARTISTS Raphael, there is no need for anyone to assume that Peter Tillemans did not own a genuine design by Raphael big enough to be called a " carton " or " cartoon." As for the prices paid under the hammer for the other masters in Tille- mans' little collection, there is evidence enough in the British Museum. I choose the sale of Edward Earl of Oxford, Deceased, held in Cock's rooms in the Great Piazza, Covent Garden, on Monday the 8th of March, 1742, and the five days that followed. In a week the total receipts were ;(^3,9o8 195. 6d. A portrait of Rembrandt by himself fetched only six guineas; and another Rembrandt, an Old Man's Head, was bought by the Duke of Ancaster for ^z 4s. Two landscapes by Gaspar Poussin, companion pictures, were sold at ^\$ 10s., and another work by this artist, " An exceeding fine Landskip and Figures," ran up to ^^S ^¥- Claude Lorrain ranged in price from ten guineas to ^z'] 6s. The Duke of Bedford gave ten guineas for Claude's " Flight into Egypt, in a small landscape "; and the Earl of Essex invested ^27 6s. in a Claude framed as an octagon, and representing " A Seastorm with a Sunset." " The Marriage of St. Catharine, by Vandyck," has ^^^5 against it in the margin. And to this I must add that ten pictures by John Wootton competed bravely in price against the most noted foreigners, yet failed to win the sums which he himself had long asked and received. Later, in the chapter on Wootton, we shall return to this matter. One example will suffice here. A Paul Veronese, " Our Saviour at Supper," fetched thirteen guineas, precisely the same price as was given for a landscape and figures by Wootton. Enough has been said to show that Mr. Baillie-Grohman wrote impetuously when he jibed at a few big names in Tillemans' auction. Any popular painter of those days could buy a few good pictures for his home. So I am glad that Peter Tillemans need not be placed among the sporting artists who have had no wish to live with a few carefully-chosen works by painters who were not sportsmen also. It has been said more than once that Peter Tillemans, unlike Wootton, Seymour and Spencer, did not paint portraits of racehorses, apart from those which he introduced as little figures into his long and narrow views of New- market racecourses. Well, this auction catalogue contradicts this opinion, for it names a portrait of a famous horse named Coneyskins, a grey son of the Lister Turk, bred by the Duke of Bolton, in 1712. Coneyskins, in 1718, won the King's Gold Cup at York, and later he gained the Royal Cups at Nottingham, Lincoln, and Newmarket. And a few years before this sale, '^^ (0 :: ? 3 SI ^ I I z g CD J tiJQ. I- E 3: Oh PETER TILLEMANS: i68o(?)-i734 59 namely in 1729, a horse-portrait by Tillemans, called Roger de Coverley, was catalogued at Knowsley Hall. On the other hand, Vertue says that Peter Tillemans painted " horses as big as the life," and the late Sir Walter Gilbey believed that " 25 copperplates, 7I in. deep by 8| in. wide, were engraved by R. Parr from portraits of race- horses by Tillemans and his contemporary, John Wootton." Well, I should greatly like to find them, or to meet someone who has ever seen them. They are unknown to Mr. Fores, of Piccadilly, whose family has traded in sporting prints and pictures since the year 1783, and whose sympathy with all historic aspects of sport in art is keen and broad. Mr. Baillie-Grohman goes so far as to say that S. Ravenet engraved after Tillemans twelve plates of horses; and that E. Kirkall engraved in mezzotint another series of eight plates, giving the horses' names and the names also of their owners. If so, they are too elusive to be found by me, and so uncommon in the markets that even Mr. Fores has no record of them. R. Houston's mezzotints after Seymour and Spencer give information about the horses represented, and if Kirkall did similar work after Tillemans it ought to be better known than Houston's, as Kirkall is noted for his original experiments in tinted chiaroscuro. The British Museum has a volume of Kirkall's prints, and it contains no horse-portraits. There are three typical scenes after Ridinger : A Stag Hunt, A Boar Hunt, and A Bear Hunt. These prints are dated 1729. Another interesting matter descends from Tillemans' auction. A portrait was sold of " The Late Duke of Kingston, with Pointers, and a View of His Seat." There are several variants of this subject. I have seen one at Mr. Leggatt's, in St. James's Street, and was much interested ; it proved that Peter Tillemans took hints from Wootton. The Duke of Kingston is on horseback, with keepers, and eleven young pointers all standing to game, well-spaced across the foreground, with the duke behind on our left, and a spacious landscape receding towards Thoresby Hall in the remote background. Pritchard made an engraving of this picture, and he or his publisher chose a funny title : " His Grace and attendants going a-setting." Recently I saw a goodish print of this line engraving at Mr. Rimell's in Duke Street, off Piccadilly, i6| in. by 28I in. ; its margins had been cut years ago, so the quaint title was missing. As an illustration of early English topographical work united to sport, students will find few prints better than this one for a portfolio. Had it been engraved in the rich velvet blacks and greys of mezzotint, it would be sold at a high price. Now and then it is found as a colour-print, but the colouring is unlike the picture. 6o BRITISH SPORTING ARTISTS Tillemans remained popular after his death; and his name was associated with a set of prints (17 in. deep by 19 in. wide) showing events in the history of Charles the First, engraved by Tardieu, Baron, Harris, Dupuis, and Vander Gucht, after pictures by several artists, including Vanderbank, Cheron, and one of the Parrocels, either Joseph or Charles. This commemorative scheme of work was praised enthusiastically by Vertue. In an advertisement of 1768, by Robert Wilkinson, 58 Cornhill, London, there are nine good sub- jects : (i) The King's Marriage; (2) King Charles before Hull; (3) Revolt of the Fleet; (4) The King Setting up his Standard; (5) The King seized by Cornet Joyce at Holmby House; (6) The King's escape from Hampton Court; (7) Trial of the King; (8) The King taking leave of his children; and (9) The Apotheosis or Death of the King. A print after Tillemans in the British Museum shows that these titles were sometimes altered, for it is described as " The King's Declaration to his Gentry and Army in September 1642." This title is given also in French, and so is a closely printed account of the great event. It is a notable print, in which Vander Gucht shows marked improvement. As for Tillemans, he risked his reputation when he chose and attacked this big piece of history, but he came through his difficulties with credit, thanks to his early practice in copying battle pictures. An inscription says that Vander Gucht worked from a painting; so I wish to find out where the picture is now. A Flemish painter could not fail to love the great beheaded patron of art, who honoured Rubens, and treated Vandyck as a familiar friend. Charles often went down the river in his barge to visit Vandyck at Blackfriars. On one occasion the King was worried about money, and said : " And you, Sir Knight, know you what it is to want three or four thousand pounds ? " " Yes, Sire," the scapegrace painter answered. " He who keeps his house open for his friends, and his purse for his mistresses, will soon find a vacuum in his coffers." Vandyck found a coffin there also, since his death at forty-two was caused mainly by dissipation. Tillemans would feel that all Flemish painters were bound to Charles the First by lasting associations of art; and the print after his picture shows that he put a genuine Royalist feeling into his design. There are two defects, arising from inexperience as a painter of original history. His horses are too much alike in shape and alertness, with the result that the King's charger has too many rivals. And Charles himself should have a personal dignity magnified by the cause for which his devotees are prepared to die. In a time of tragedy Kings are symbols, not persons, PETER TILLEMANS: i68o(?)-i734 6i and Charles the First is a person in this print, and a person with funny legs, as he was not in family life. II We have now to consider Tillemans as a sportsman. He studied carefully the racing print after Francis Barlow, and improved upon it variously, becoming one of Newmarket's most valued historians. It would be a bad history of Newmarket races that did not give illustrations from his racing pictures and prints. Two of these pictures passed into the collec- tion at Knowsley Hall : " Starting Point of the Beacon Course, Newmarket," and " End of the Beacon Course, Newmarket." They are oblong pictures, 2 ft. 7^ in. by 5 ft. 7^ in., and were catalogued for the first time at Knowsley in 1736, according to Sir George Scharf. The starting scene is curiously different from a present-day race. Some ladies are on horseback, and in the foreground there is an example of pillion riding, with a woman seated on a pad or cushion behind a man's saddle. Jockeys are mounting; a drummer stands in the right-hand corner waiting to start the race ; and behind is a level horizon, with numerous figures.^ The companion picture is described by Scharf as brighter and much more cheerful. There is a sky with light clouds delicately painted, and it occupies a large portion of the picture. Figure after figure is put in freely, swiftly, with great animation. Two horses in the foreground, a white one ridden by a scarlet jockey, and a chestnut with his jockey in yellow, advance at full speed from the extreme left, causing much excitement among the spectators, who are thronged close by the winning-post at our right-hand side, where a high square building stands, with women in the balcony. Jockeys are seen below, betting over a wall ; and a church and houses are in the distance to right of the stables. There is another building in the middle of the picture. " A lady in blue, and gentlemen in red and white coats on grey and bay horses, are prominent in the foreground." We learn, too, from Scharf, that Lord Derby has three views of Knowsley by Tillemans, including a large one of Knowsley racecourse, painted on canvas, 3 ft. ii| in. by 7 ft. 7 in. A race is being run, and the sutlers' booths, and throngs of spectators, many on horseback, are " painted with a force and mastery of colour quite equal to the best works by Wootton." Indeed, Tille- mans owed a great deal to Wootton's pictures of Newmarket. If two or three ^ Sir George Scharf's catalogue. 63 BRITISH SPORTING ARTISTS of these Knowsley pictures could have been photographed for this book, students of sport in art would have been benefited; but, unhappily, I appealed vainly for permission. Many collectors are glad when their historic pictures are illustrated, because they know that artists lose their public value when they are shut up as hermits in private houses. Art cannot be made too national. The day will come when Parliament will decree that old British pictures belong to the nation's history, and that their owners are public trustees as well as private art collectors. It is as necessary to keep historic pictures within reach of students as it is to keep good books in print. When any old painter's historic value becomes the private possession of a few families, as in the case of Tillemans, or of Wootton, students are turned into mendicants, and other persons have to make shift with a few old prints after his designs that may be bought in the open market. Original etchings by Tillemans have become scarce, particularly the one in which, in a long print dedicated to William Lord Byron, and dated 1723, he shows how sportsmen with their hounds started out for a hunt. Mr. Fores, of Piccadilly, has a print of this in colour. In the British Museum there are only two etchings by Tillemans that do not represent racing, and both are battle subjects, expressively suggested with a light and free touch. The larger one is a composition, and may represent one of Marlborough's actions. Did Tillemans paint hunting scenes in oil-colour ? I have never seen one, unless a picture of hare hunting at Clandon Park, in Lord Onslow's collection, may be regarded as an early adventure by Tillemans, not one by James Seymour. Its hounds in full cry are too primitively quaint, but its horses are touched in with a good deal of tact and skill; the landscape has a fresh and wide aspect, though painted with an experimental care that fumbles; and the sky has charm, with a feeling for space. The picture shows very well how English landscape art in its first period grew tentatively around sporting episodes. Vertue speaks of " huntings " by Tillemans, and I find in a sale catalogue of January 9th, 1755, that one of them belonged to the estate of Sir John Austen, Bart. In 1752 a printseller named Elizabeth Foster, of the White Horse on Ludgate Hill, advertised a " Fox Chase " by Tillemans; and sixteen years later another print of the same picture was catalogued by Robert Wil- kinson, 58 Cornhill. These prints are not in the British Museum, and I should like to see them. One may have been etched by Tillemans himself, for Vertue says that the artist painted " huntings, racings, of which he is now [1723] etching and (0 ^ ■: Q.-t en 05 Olu ■< IQ. ^: CO O LLl o-s coh- ; Ho s LU . a OZ s: ■*- c PETER TILLEMANS: i68o(?)-i734 63 printing four large plates from his own designs." Some years later Vertue adds to this information, telling a little story which has not yet received enough attention from collectors and printsellers. Tillemans required some help for one of his plates, and called in an engraver named Joseph Simpson, senior, who had studied in Great Queen Street at the school of art opened by Kneller in 171 1 . Before he went to this academy, as it was called, Simpson had worked for a long time as an engraver on copper, pewter and brass. Tillemans " employed him to touch up a plate he had etched of one of his Newmarket prints." This retouching done, Simpson behaved as a man of business. If his name appeared under the print all of the etched work would be accepted as his, and he would score. He must have used tact when he spoke to his chief, for Tillemans consented, or was " persuaded," as Vertue says. En- couraged, Simpson wished to do one of the plates entirely, so he struck a bargain. If his finished plate did not please his employer it should be " cut to pieces." Vertue adds that " the poor man's strength failing," " the plate is not approved of," but " he expects to be paid." In a later note, written between 1738-1741, Vertue says : " Mr. Tille- mans published seven large plates of huntings and racehorses of Newmarket," partly etched by himself from his own designs. Several Newmarket subjects are very long. They were etched on two plates of copper, then prints from them were joined together. Three specimens are in the Print Room of the British Museum, bound up in a volume of the King's Library. One of them is 43I in. long by i6f in. wide. Though the etching is attributed to Claude du Bosc, we must look also for another hand. The print is dedicated by Tillemans, in English and French, to George Prince of Wales; and represents a scene at Newmarket over the Long Course, from the Starting Post to the Stand. Two horses, in a rocking-horse gallop, race towards the post on our right, followed closely at full speed by a dozen mounted onlookers. Other horsemen outside the course lose their heads and have a race of their own. The whole print is alive with unfamiliar animation. As a study in costume the print is valuable. And what a grand stand ! A mediaeval dovecot had more constructive thought in it, very often, than this primitive tall affair with two quaint boxes below its eaves. Georges One and Two cared more for racing than for good carpentry and masonry; and this applies also to George the Third's reign, as anyone can see by referring to such evidence as J. N. Sartorius's picture of the racehorse Lurcher beating Kitt Carr and Grey Ormond in 1793. Here, too, a few yards from the winning post, is a tall absurdity called a stand; and here, as in Tillemans' finish, there is no 64 BRITISH SPORTING ARTISTS genuine crowd. A race seems to have been like a jolly private party, or a free-and-easy amusement for invited guests. Another long etching, 42^ in. by 16 in., is dedicated by Tillemans to James Stanley Earl of Derby, and shovi^s what happened at Newmarket just before the King's Plate was run over the Round Course. It is to be noted that the artist varies in the way in which he marks the difference between racehorses and other horses that are ridden. Sometimes a bodyguard of troops ride horses too much like the racers, and this runs counter to other pictures of the eighteenth century. At a much later date famous racehorses pretty often resembled what we regard as fine hunters. This is true of Buzzard, Eclipse, Creeper, and Champion; but when portraits of these noted horses are compared with hunters of their own times, as in pictures by J. N. Sartorius, an interesting question arises, for the hunters are much heavier than the thoroughbreds, and heavier also than our own hunters. They suggest that Squire Westerns pretty often ranged in weight from thirteen to fifteen stones and more.^ Country gentlemen of the sporting eighteenth century thought less and ate more than sportsmen think and eat to-day, and were far and away less temperate than our own. Their habits were of a flesh- making sort. And many jockeys, if portrait pictures are to be trusted, would not have ridden light as cavalry. But the main point is that Peter Tillemans may have tried to please his patrons by making most of their horses lighter than they were and nearer to the build that careful breeding and rearing would produce gradually. Does Richard Blome help us in this matter? What does he say about racers and hunters ? ^ "If you would have good running horses," he answers, " let them be as light as possible, large and long, but well shaped, with a short back, long sides, and a little long-legged, and narrow-breasted, for such will gallop the lighter and nimbler, and run the faster." Blome notes not only the great value of Eastern sires, but also the great difficulty of obtaining those that are prized most highly in their own countries. He is sure that racing is too much of a trade among certain nobles and gentlemen, who impoverish their estates instead of running only for Plates, and to improve horses. It is clear that the Turf in its infancy had big ideas of many sorts. When Blome says that a running horse should be "as light as possible, large and long," he does not draw from Nature. Flying Childers himself, 1 It is said that a Lifeguardsman at the present time, when fully equipped, burdens his horse with about twenty stones, sometimes more. 2 The Gentleman's Recreation, 1686, Part II, section on Horsemanship. Life Guards Duke of George 1. The Interpreter Devonshire in Blue. in Grey. Behind. The Earl of Portmcre in Rose. The King's Chair Tregonwell Fram pton, "Father of The Enghsh Turf.' Flying Childers leadinG a string of the Duke of Devonshire's horses. GEORGE The FIRST AT NEWMARKET, 1722. The original Picture, formerly in the Earl of Portmore s Collection, now belongs to A. C. Dunn-Gardner. Esq- Ri-/>ro(iuctd from an old Coiour-Frhit l,-nt hv Mr. Forts. Fhcadti/y. PETER TILLEMANS: i68o(?)-i734 65 foaled twenty-nine years after the publication of Blome's book, appears in history as a close-made horse only 14 J hands high, short-backed and com- pressed, with a reach that lay entirely in his limbs. When he is compared with a later descendant of the Darley Arabian, the great Eclipse, we find that the latter, though hunter-like from present-day points of view, has advantages over Flying Childers, for he has great length of waist, and stands over a wider span of ground. Taunton argues from these facts that " if anatomical structure have anything to do with speed, then, looking at their respective frames, it is evident that, at weight for age over a mile course, Eclipse must have beaten Childers." " If " is a word that may open limitless argument. In horses, as in human runners, may we not be sure that speed depends largely on the response given by the rest of the body to a plucky mind and a sound heart } Flying Childers, whose popular fame gave inn signs to his country everywhere, was watched officially and thoroughly in only two of his five races. When he ran over the Round Course at Newmarket against Almanzor and Brown Betty, carrying 9 St. 2 lb., he was timed by the Dukes of Devonshire and Rutland, who judged that his great speed in a second of time was 82^ ft., or nearly at the rate of a mile a minute. He ran four miles in six minutes and forty-eight seconds, or at the rate of 35I miles an hour, carrying that weight, 9 st. 2 lb. If we accept this estimate as correct, we cannot accept Taunton's hypothesis about the inevitable defeat of a Flying Childers by an Eclipse. And to compare the running of horses belonging to different generations seems to be as futile as to compare the acting of Garrick with that of Henry Irving. To attempt to judge what we cannot see and measure is to waste time. Flying Childers lived from 171 5 to 1 74 1, and Eclipse from 1764 to 1789. Their bodily structure alone can be studied now, and it is worth while to ask whether Tillemans' portrait of Flying Childers is nearer or not to the present-day ideal of a racer than George Stubbs's exact portraits of Eclipse. If Tillemans did make most of his horses too much alike in structure, and too light for their period, in order to please his patrons, as I believe he did, his conduct was no worse than that of some later artists, whose horses' heads were often too small. Take Ben Marshall, an artist of uncommon merit. He is blamed now for this want of proportion, but in his time a very small head was looked upon as the greatest beauty in a horse, as Henry Aiken explained in his book on equine defects and beauties. Richard Blome himself drew what he regarded as an ideal racehorse ; and when he wrote of hunters he asked for a type of horse that would be useful for F 66 BRITISH SPORTING ARTISTS other purposes besides hunting. This reminds us of the fact that the first work done by Flying Childers was that of carrying Leonard Childers' letter- bag to and fro between Carr House and Doncaster. Blome sees that the choice of hunters depends partly on the speed of dogs, and he declines to recommend two sorts of hound : the big-headed, deep-mouthed, Southern species, which are too slow " for one that would keep himself in vigour "; and " such very fleet ones as some of the Northern, that the following them is more properly called running than hunting. . . . To follow these extra- ordinary fleet ones, a man must have such light horses, and keep them so finely and nicely, that they are not fit for any other service; not that I would have them put to any other but when occasion requires. As if a man were to go to the Army on a sudden, if his Hunters be a good sort of horses, with firm Umbs, and not too tenderly kept, what a great convenience it is to him, I leave to anyone to judge. . . . Some of our well-bred twelve-stone horses that have been sent abroad, have proved extraordinary good for the War." It is precisely this battle-horse look that may be noted frequently in the hunters painted by artists of the eighteenth century ; but it was not a genuine battle-horse, such as Velazquez put from time to time into equestrian portraits. Movement in war was becoming faster, and a different horse, faster, but able to bear fatigue, was bred from the old war-horse stock. All this one cannot help reading when a series of chronological illustrations from Tillemans' time and Wootton's to those of J. N. Sartorius and George Stubbs lie on a big table, and show a well-chosen sequence of hunters in one line and of racers in another. Would that we could see in a gallery all the Newmarket pictures painted in the eighteenth century, with separate portraits of the most noted winners ! Many persons will remember what Dick Christian said about hunters. " Give me 'em lengthy," he told The Druid, " and short-legged for Leicester- shire. I would have 'em no bigger than fifteen-free; great rump, hips and hocks; forelegs well afore them, and good shoulders; thoroughbred if you can get them, but none of your high short horses ! Thoroughbred horses make the best hunters. I never heard of a great thing yet but it was done by a thoroughbred horse." Tillemans also had a passion for thoroughbreds, and the whole of his work as a painter of racing pictures has not yet been discovered. Did he ever collaborate with James Seymour, for example ? And have some of his paintings been given to Wootton ? Something will be said later on these difficult questions. PETER TILLEMANS: i68o(?)-i734 67 To sum up inadequately, but as truthfully as is possible, what we owe to Tillemans as a sportsman, a large print in colour is given here of his most interesting design. The original picture used to belong to the Earl of Port- more; it is owned to-day by Mr. A. C. Dunn-Gardner, of Denston Hall, Newmarket. The colour plate is taken from a rare print in a set of four owned by Mr. Fores, of Piccadilly. There are horses in it of several sorts, and nearly all are first cousins anatomically. We see George the First at Newmarket in 1722, just five years before his death. Behind, on our left, the Lifeguards are in attendance. On our right, close by the print's margin, are two figures on horseback ; the nearer one in a greyish white coat is Tregonwell Frampton, Father of the English Turf. The nearest string of horses belongs to the Duke of Devonshire; its leader is Flying Childers. The other horses on Warren Hill are portraits also, but I cannot find out their names. One of the greys is the Bloody-shouldered Arabian, probably. As for the equestrian portraits, only three are known by name, I believe. George the First wears a grey-yellow coat, and on his off side is the Earl of Portmore in rose, with his hat doffed. There are two more hatless figures in this group. The one in white is the Duke of Devonshire, while the other in blue on a dark brown horse, with his back to us, is the German interpreter, for the King's English needed help. For the rest, Ely Cathedral is to be seen dimly in the far distance on our right; and in the middle distance, on the dark outline of Warren Hill, an inch from the print's right-hand margin, we note The King's Chair, from which Charles the Second from time to time watched famous horses taking their daily exercise. Wootton painted a similar picture — and a very good one — of Newmarket Heath, and it was seen at Christie's on November 26th, 1920, when the Dermot McCalmont pictures were sold. The strings of racehorses are much closer to the King's Chair ; the composition is not frieze-like, the canvas measuring 42^ in. by 60 in.; but the general resemblance between this Newmarket and the Anglo-Fleming's is noteworthy. As long as Peter Tillemans is represented by his Newmarket pictures, he will keep his early place in the history of English sport, topography, and country life. His adaptability must have been very remarkable, for the spirit of his best work is English ; as English as Seymour's racing scenes, for example. CHAPTER III SEYMOUR AND SOME OTHER PRIMITIVES When George the Third established the Royal Academy in 1768, England could not supply enough foundation members, her habitual neglect of native art having turned many a painter into a lifelong primitive. No fewer than eleven foreigners were chosen, more than was enforced by circumstances, since Romney and Stubbs were passed over; but if five-and-twenty of the foundation members had been immigrants from the Continent, England would have received no more humiliation than she had sought and bought. Among the artists who carried on the pioneer work of Barlow, and who remained primitive throughout their lives, a high place has been given by sportsmen to James Seymour, who died in 1752, aged fifty. He had talent enough to be a fine painter, but he was untrained, and a very impulsive character began to act in his private life as soon as his day's work was over. He painted laboriously, and this discipline being at odds with his temperament, reactions came, and hasty persons regarded him as a lazy fellow. Horace Walpole did, forgetting the large amount of work that Seymour had added to the history of hunting and racing. " James Seymour," says Walpole, " was thought even superior to Wootton in drawing a horse, but was too idle to apply himself to his profession, and never attained any higher excellence. He was the only son of Mr. James Seymour, a banker and great virtuoso, who drew well himself, and had been intimate with Faithorne, Lely, Simon, and Christopher Wren, and died at the age of eighty-one in 1739 ; the son, in 1752, aged fifty." Why was this primitive preferred in any way to Wootton ? He could no more have painted Wootton's battlepieces or such larger compositions as the hunting scenes in the Great Hall at Badminton, Gloucestershire, than he could have run against Spanking Roger, a chestnut son of Flying Childers. Must we assume that Wootton's Newmarket period, which came early in his long career, produced fewer good likenesses than Seymour's ? Wootton's inborn 68 St ?■ > ;;;; 8i OoJ Geo SEYMOUR AND SOME OTHER PRIMITIVES 69 desire was to make a picture, and many a horse-portrait by him has a magnified air, a peculiar originality, that is among the indications of Wootton's handi- craft. It is so sure a token of Wootton's presence that we may doubt whether a horse from the stables in his art is ever " beastly like," as Matthew Arnold said of a portrait of himself drawn by F. Sandys. Several things prove, or seem to prove, that Seymour's horses were regarded as good likenesses, and therefore as very valuable Turf history. In 181 3, when the Old Sporting Magazine wished to publish a portrait of Flying Childers, John Scott was employed to engrave one of the three portraits that Seymour had painted of this great thoroughbred. Two of these portraits were com- missioned by Sir William JoUiffe, who collected about fifteen examples of Seymour's work, including two hunting pictures. The third, a much larger picture, finished in 1739, was chosen by the Old Sporting Magazine because it was painted for the second owner of Flying Childers, the Duke of Devonshire. Is an artist ever invited to paint a horse three times if his first attempt is a bad likeness ? Though Seymour is primitive, quaintly immature, his technical methods do not hide from us the shape and character of famous horses ; and when he paints a hunting piece with Sir William Jolliffe either standing by a dun hunter or mounted on a grey, his costumes and old hunting customs are studied with a diligent care that can be trusted. Indeed the details are too accurate, being hard and overdone. Anyone who is interested in costumes should keep away from dull books and make friends with lively pictures and prints. Seymour's jockeys, and grooms, and stablemen, like his whippers-in, and huntsmen, and gentlemen on horseback, are so entertaining as many-coloured social history that Sir Joshua Reynolds had one of his pictures, showing a race run at Newmarket in 1750. Sir William Jolliff'e was a very good patron to Seymour, and a keen sports- man. He lived from 1665 to 1750, and for many years he was a Director of the Bank of England. About 1720 he bought " The Lodge " at Fleshy, Essex, and perhaps his pack of hounds may have been kept there. But later he seerns to have lived mainly at Epsom, where he had another house. Sir William died unmarried, and divided his very large property chiefly among three nephews. The first was John Jolliffe, direct ancestor of the present Lord Hylton of Ammerdown, Bath; the second, Mr. Tufnell of Langleys Park; and the third, Mr. Edward Northey. The Epsom house was a part of John Jolliffe's share, and Lord Hylton thinks that the Seymour pictures hung there, though this detail cannot now be 70 BRITISH SPORTING ARTISTS proved. As Seymour is connected always and exclusively with Newmarket, it is interesting to associate him also with Epsom, for races began there at the beginning of the eighteenth century, and became annual from 1730. Lord Hylton has never been able to identify the landscapes shown in the Seymour pictures collected by Sir William JoUiffe. The two hunting scenes represent Sir WiUiam preparing for the Chase, and pursuing the Chase. In the first, which is more than five feet long. Sir William stands beside a dun hunter held by a groom, and behind, shaded by some trees, a countryman holds a chestnut horse that the groom will ride. There is a church tower among the trees of a woody background. Writing of the second picture. Lord Hylton says : " It is perhaps the more interesting. Sir William is shown galloping on a grey horse and following a pack of hounds across a grass country, attended by four sportsmen on horseback, and by a groom in blue livery. A huntsman in a scarlet coat, with blue collar and cuff's, has a great French horn.^ The gentlemen wear three-cornered hats with gold-laced edges, and the servants black jockey-caps. In this picture Sir William Jolliffe appears to be a man of fifty or thereabouts." It is clear, then, that he did not look his age, for when Sir William was five-and-fifty, in 1720, Seymour was in his eighteenth year, and unable to paint. But there was plenty of time for Seymour, as Sir William would live to be eighty-five, dying two years before his chosen painter. Another picture in this interesting series is called " Sir Robert Fagg and the Gipsy on Newmarket Heath." It was engraved, and this very eccentric sporting baronet must have been well pleased, for he is painted as he liked to be seen at Newmarket, shabbily dressed, and more or less at ease on a broken- kneed grey stallion too aged to be high-spirited. Sir Robert was believed to be miserly in all matters, but Seymour believed that he could stop in a ride and take a piece of money from a canvas bag in order to give it to a gipsy woman carrying a basket of cherries. Pictures of this old topical sort need their stories, their social history, which may be lost in a few generations. Lord Hylton has also a racing picture which has come down to him as a Seymour, and some parts of it attracted and surprised me very much, for reasons which I will try to explain. Three months after I examined it, I found at Messrs. Knoedler's, in Old Bond Street, a photograph in which the same racing scene was amplified and its composition improved, but not by Seymour's hand. Here indeed was a find worth making 1 Which of the ^ One of the curling horns that may be studied in pictures from Barlow's day to Wootton's and Seymour's times. SEYMOUR AND SOME OTHER PRIMITIVES 71 pictures was painted first ? Both of them are illustrated here, but before we note their points of resemblance and their contrasts, let me introduce the debate by continuing my account of Lord Hylton's picture, written three months before my visit to Messrs. Knoedler's. My typescript says : — " It is a race between five horses at Newmarket, all running in a string, with a chestnut leading, ridden by a jockey in blue. The racers gallop in rocking- horse fashion, with a stretch of foreground between them and us. They are primitive ; but their movement has a sort of uncouth rhythm, and the far- receding landscape and the pure clear sky show that we lost a big painter when James Seymour entered the hard arena of art without being trained professionally. " This valuable racing scene hangs in Lord Hylton's London house. Note its animated background, with moving groups and equestrian figures all admirably suggested. In this work Seymour stands side by side with Tillemans as an early sporting painter who understood the value of minor interests and episodes in a composition. But for a certain heaviness of handling in the foreground horses and jockeys, an expert might ask : ' Is this an early Peter Tillemans, with a background put in towards the close of his career ? ' " Here and there the distant figures have been a little over-cleaned, dark glazes having been removed from light spots ; but this defect could be remedied easily. The Royal coach-and-six — black horses greyed by distance and atmosphere — move with the race, and this example is followed by a great many attendants and many onlookers. Far off on our left we see that several horse- men gallop in a new style, with their horses' hind feet slightly raised from the ground : a notable thing which I have not yet seen in Tillemans and Wootton." Now, as soon as we look at the other illustration we come face to face with a genuine Tillemans, painted on one of his long and narrow canvases, and belonging to the same set of racing episodes as the " George the First at New- market," reproduced here in colour. Mr. Fores agrees that the work is plainly Tillemans', and no expert has a knowledge of old sporting pictures wider than his. A magnifying glass will tell you that Wootton's name has been put upon a stone in the foreground on our right, just below the group of equestrian figures, reputed to be Lord Portmore and other celebrities. But names on old canvases have no value unless they are confirmed by styles. James Ward used to say that, when he was young, he saw some pictures of his own bearing Morland's name, and that when he himself became popular, he found his own name on several Morlands. Wootton was not influenced by Tillemans; it was Tillemans who took hints from Wootton; and their individual qualities of style and of composition are different. And now some interesting questions 72 BRITISH SPORTING ARTISTS arise. Was the better picture painted before or after Lord Hylton's, and did Seymour work alone or in collaboration ? He was Tillemans' junior by eighteen years, and the Anglo-Fleming began his work in England when Seymour was only six years old. When Seymour began to study racehorses at Newmarket he must have met Tillemans, and surely he would wish to learn from him all that he could, perhaps as a pupil. Flemish and French artists have always been eager to teach, and Seymour was untrained. Altogether, I think it probable that Lord Hylton's picture is a work of collaboration, and also that it is of earlier date than the better painting. Consider a few reasons : — 1 . If Seymour copied a picture by Tillemans for Sir William JoUiffe, he would have copied the whole of it, and not merely a part which he altered greatly, and also at times harmfully. Take the grey post as a point from which to contrast the compositions, and you will see that even the backgrounds differ very much, though in many respects they are alike. 2. The running horses in the better picture are not only more numerous; they are put upon canvas with better judgment, and their handling is easier. To turn a race between eight jockeys, six of whom are in a cluster, into a primitive line of five would be a silly thing for a copyist to do when working from a borrowed picture, or from a picture that he had bought. 3. If a copyist wished to steal another man's idea he would not preserve in his background the coach-and-six at full gallop, and other entertaining groups that cannot be forgotten when once they have been seen. 4. The inferior picture suggests improvements, such as we find in the better one. As a rule criticism has only a negative value, because it has no effect at all on a finished piece of work; it is like praising or blaming one of Nature's phenomena. But whenever a good problem enters into criticism, as in the present case, unbiased study and debate may arrive at some positive and useful result. As for the horse-portraits by Seymour in Lord Hylton's collection, there is one of Lord Oxford's famous white stallion called the Bloody- Shouldered Arabian, because he had a splash of bright red on the point of his right shoulder. What age was Seymour when he portrayed this horse ? I cannot follow the horse in pictures later than 1726, in which year John Wootton signed and dated a portrait of him. Three years later, as we shall see in the chapter on Wootton (p. no), this Arabian enjoyed " a comfortable state of heahh in his old age." Taunton, who did not know of this Wootton portrait, 5'Sk- -£ ■-< Q. > -'• ^ J2 i O O 03 c. QC 1. O < lU U ill LLl ** W Z . c < J o <1-.E CD CO *J c ■D O 5^ LLl -Q tij-> zo H> < uj CjCO <5 SEYMOUR AND SOME OTHER PRIMITIVES 73 is very vague, mentioning 171 5 as an approximate date for the Bloody- Shouldered Arabian. In 1726 Seymour was twenty-four; so his picture of Lord Oxford's white Arabian belongs to an early period in the work of an untrained painter. It has been suggested to me that Seymour's earliest portraits of horses may have been either copied or adapted from Wootton's; and there is nothing unlikely in this idea. Wootton is credited with nine or ten portraits of the Bloody-Shouldered Arabian, and Lord Hylton tells me that in former days he noted several versions of Seymour's portrait of this racehorse. There was one at Rushmore, in the Pitt-Rivers collection, and another at Lord Sherborne's. This one is regarded as a Wootton by Mr. Goulding. An engraving of the racehorse Basto was made from a Seymour painting, and Basto Hved from 1703 to 1723. Well, Seymour was only a year old when Basto was foaled, and the engraving shows a young horse full of pride ; so we cannot believe that he painted this portrait from life. As for his portraits of Flying Childers at Ammerdown, Bath, in one the bay thoroughbred is stripped and held by a boy; and Seymour put in a second horse as a contrast, a grey with cropped ears, ridden by a man who carries a racing saddle across his mount's withers.^ This painting measures 4 ft. by 3 ft., a size chosen also for the second likeness of Childers. Here Seymour competes against Tillemans by showing his model on Newmarket Heath, with horses at exercise in the background. But he does not repeat the Anglo-Flemish painter's composition, with Flying Childers walking at the head of a string of racehorses, held by a groom in a black cap and a long yellow coat. His champion is ridden by a gaily-dressed groom, with blue stockings, a black cap, and a yellow jacket relieved by blue cuffs. II In Seymour's primitive style three qualities may be noted : he is interested as an observer by anatomy ; he perceives that a portrait should be as like its model as he is able to make it; but he tries to choose what he regards as the most characteristic mood in each racer, and is attracted by that wondrous energy which seems like animated electricity when a thoroughbred stallion is restive or ill-tempered. To paint horses always in profile, and against similar backgrounds, is certain to give to any artist's work a sameness resembling a routine; but ^ Gilbey's Animal Painters. 74 BRITISH SPORTING ARTISTS Seymour disliked this monotony, and gave much attention to the painting of skies and of other interests. Some writers have said that he did not accept money for his pictures till he had lost on the Turf his independence. Is there a reason to believe this ? Between his earliest portraits of horses and his father's death in 1739, there was time enough for an impetuous young man to lose several fortunes over horse-racing. If " he was well-to-do, especially after his father's death," till " he got rid of his money over horse-racing," as Gilbey relates, when did his losses begin ? Gilbey adds : " When Seymour took up his residence at Newmarket as a professional painter of equine portraits he had the knowledge gained during his own brief and unfortunate turf career to supplement his natural gifts." Now, a picture of his called " A Race at Newmarket " is dated April 4th, 173 1 ; ^ so his Newmarket period began at least eight years before his father died. Would he not bet with his own money as recklessly as he did with his father's legacy ? and as soon as he began to lose bets, would he not begin to paint for fees, early in his career } Surely yes. He knew that his father's friends, Lely and Christopher Wren, received payment for their work. That Seymour was a high-spirited fellow, and also willing to receive money on account, is proved by a good story that cannot be retold too frequently. Charles Duke of Somerset, old and autocratic, sent for James Seymour to decorate a room at Petworth with portraits of his own racehorses. Though he treated the artist as a guest, his pride was ill at ease, and one day at dinner he fired off an ironic compliment for the purpose of teUing Seymour that he was not sufficiently humble and submissive. Raising his wineglass the Duke said, " Cousin Seymour, your health ! " Seymour counter-attacked at once, as artists do when their feeUngs are suddenly probed. " My Lord," he answered, " I really do believe that I have the honour of being of your Grace's family." A laugh would have ended this little scene very well ; but no attacker has ever liked to receive a counterblow ; and the Duke, losing control of himself, left the room, and sent his steward to dismiss the painter. But Seymour's work was unfinished, and a room partly decorated with horses looking absurd, another painter of horses was called in. His name is ^ Gilbey knew it well, for it was in the Elsenham collection. On a canvas 3 ft. by 2 ft. Seymour shows how the Duke of Bridgwater's bay horse, Hazard, beat the Duke of Ancaster's grey Arab, each horse carrying 9 stone. In the background are several figures on horseback against the stand and the ditch. SEYMOUR AND SOME OTHER PRIMITIVES 75 not given, but Seymour had only three competitors, Wootton, Thomas Spencer, and James Roberts, who was also an engraver, like Henry Roberts. Wootton can be ruled out as too busy and too famous. Either Spencer or Roberts went to Petworth, looked at Seymour's decorations, shook his head, and confessed that the job was too much for him. It was beyond his skill, and he humbly begged his Grace to recall Seymour. As there seems to have been little to choose between Spencer and Seymour, this want of self-confidence is perplexing. I've never seen a painting by James Roberts, but if he was a draughtsman mainly, and as such he is described in prints of racehorses engraved after his work, why did the Duke send for him ? If Spencer was chosen his diffidence needs explanation. Perhaps Seymour bought it, aided by some of his many friends. In any case the Duke of Somerset gave way haughtily, summoning Seymour again to Petworth. He forgot that a circulating story is a sort of net from which its actors cannot break loose at will. Seymour answered : " My Lord, I will now prove that I am of your Grace's family; for I won't come 1 " Stung by this rebuff, the Duke remembered that he had advanced ^(^ 100 to Seymour, and sent his steward to demand repayment. The comedians were now in London, and Seymour told the steward that he would write to his Grace. He wrote, and addressed his letter " North- umberland House, opposite the Trunkmaker's, Charing Cross." The Duke, seeing at a glance that this insolence was in Seymour's hand- writing, was enraged, and threw the letter unopened into his fire, ordering the steward at the same time to have Seymour arrested. Unhappy steward 1 How could he arrest the debtor with a tact so diplomatic that his master could not be blamed by public opinion ? Perhaps, too, he liked Seymour personally. It is certain that he called on him and said too much, relating what had happened to the letter. Seymour listened negligently and smiled. An opportunity for evasion was put into his hand ; so he said : — " It was hasty in his Grace to burn my letter, because it contained a bank- note for £100, and therefore we are now quits." Here the story ends abruptly, and I regret always that neither Fielding nor Thackeray made use of it, with a fitting continuation; for the steward's reception by his master must have been explosive, and Seymour's flank-turmng was too strategical to be good in civilian life. To-day such a sequence of incidents could not occur. In Seymour's time 76 BRITISH SPORTING ARTISTS too much wine had reactions of wayward temper, and there was no democratic make-believe to bridge gaps that separated society into clearly-defined ranks. A Duke in Seymour's day was to struggling painters what The Times news- paper, less than a century later, became to struggling authors and artists ; he had many reasons to believe that he could either make or mar names and careers. Seymour, then, risked a great deal; and it is easy to measure how much by recalling to memory how men of adventure — poets, playwrights, painters, etc. — fared in the eighteenth century when they tried to sell their work to tradesmen. In 1732 a playwright named W. Havard sold a tragedy, Scanderbeg, to the new theatre in Goodman's Fields, receiving only £22 12s. 6d. Yet the public had to pay 35. for boxes, 45. for boxes and balconies on the stage, 2S. in the pit, and is. in the gallery. In 1726 a novelist named John Clarke accepted only 105. 6d. per sheet of sixteen pages for two long stories to be published by " flinty old Curll." John Gay, in 1727, received £g^ los. for the copyrights of two books, Fifty Fables being one, and The Beggar's Opera the other. A few years earlier, in 171 3, Joseph Addison managed to sell Cato for £ioy los., but even this uncommon half-success cannot be compared with James Seymour's advance payment of £100.^ Only a patron would have been so liberal to him ; and we may be sure that the Duke of Somerset was neither blind to the bad conditions which pressed too frequently upon artists and authors, nor ignorant of the current purchasing value of his loan. These things Seymour forgot, the artist in him being impulsive. Still, he did work, and with dogged care, while the mood lasted. It is said that his best work was put into his pocket sketch-books, but his rapid sketches are very hard to find. Mr. Fores has a very diligent pencil drawing of a racehorse, as well as four little portraits in oil-colour of early eighteenth-century hounds, which are marked by the same observing patience. The contrast between the gambling excitement of Seymour's private life and his fondness for excessive detail sedulously mapped is very evident. But Dallaway wrote of true pencil sketches, swift notes of hand, lightly and vividly suggestive. Where are they to be found .'' The Print Room at the British Museum aids us little in this matter. It has only three trifles of his etching and only nine drawings, not one of which confirms a remark written by Dallaway, that Seymour's " pencil sketches of horses, under various circum- stances and actions, have been rarely equalled." ^ Some are water-colour 1 See Joseph Mayer's Memoir of William UpcoH, 1879. 2 In 1888 some of Seymour's " pocket portfolios " were at Bignor Park, Sussex, SEYMOUR AND SOME OTHER PRIMITIVES 77 sketches, and others are pen-drawings. There is a profile portrait in water- colour of a bay stallion led by his groom in blue, 6^(. in. by 5f in. Some body colour is used throughout. Slow and acute attention is given to every part; there is no brilliant sketching. Another water-colour shows a hunts- man in a green coat on a chestnut horse, riding across a plain towards the right, accompanied by three hounds, two of which lead the way, 6| in. by 5^ in. Some other studies : — 1. Sketch in brown ink of a stag that runs in the rocking-horse fashion. 2. Rough sketch in brown ink of celebrated racehorses at a drinking-trough, with notes written by Seymour, as follows : "A warm-coloured picture. Goliah. Looby. Groom on the great brown horse. A brick wall beyond." Goliah, a grey son of Old Greyhound, was foaled in 1722. 3. Pen sketch in brown ink of a racehorse and his rider. A small sketch, a mere note of hand, but expressive. 4. A similar but larger pen sketch; the horse and his rider are accom- panied by the owner, who holds the bridle gently. 5. A larger pen sketch of a horse, stripped, and led by a boy, ii| in. by 7| in. 6. A horse's head in a moment of overstrained excitement : bold and expressive as a pen drawing, 9 in. by 6\ in. Written in ink along the right upper corner is the name " Tempest." Twelve years before Seymour's death, in 1740, engravers began to associate his name with that of Thomas Spencer (1700-1763), and they remained pretty busy, off and on, for about sixteen years. As all of these prints have a place in Turf history, it is necessary here to sum them up as briefly as possible. There is a rare oblong folio — rare, no doubt, because so many copies have been broken up in order that the prints might be sold one by one — called Horses and Pedigrees.^ It was published in 1752, the year of SejTnour's death, with line engravings by Parr, Canot, H. Roberts, and one or two others. Spencer is represented by typical horse-portraits. There is Silver Leg, a chestnut galloway, bred by the Earl of Portmore in 1743, and sold in 1750 to Nathaniel Curzon; and there is Othello, a black son of Old Crab, foaled in 1743. Sporley also and Starling are among Spencer's prints. From Seymour's efforts let us choose a few : — I. Bajazet, a bay son of The Godolphin Arabian, bred by Sir John Button, 1740. 1 Mr. Frank T. Sabin has a copy of this book. 78 BRITISH SPORTING ARTISTS 2. Sir Roger Mostyn's Old Partner (1718-1747), a chestnut galloping for exercise. Theo. Taunton says of this portrait that the horse shows his Oriental descent in his head and in his hindquarters, " but, already, the forcing system shows itself in the elongation of his frame, and in the strength which we express by the term ' bone.' " These remarks are worth quoting, partly because they give us the dates between which the forcing period showed its first effects, and partly because they prove that Taunton values Seymour's evidence. 3. Squirrel, foaled in 171 9, a bay son of Snake, and the best horse of his time at high weights. He was sold for 500 guineas, a very high price in those days. 4. Bald Charlotte in the act of walking, picturesquely swaddled in horse- cloths. A finely-shaped daughter of Old Royal, foaled in 1721. 5. Spanking Roger, a chestnut son of Flying Childers, bred by the Earl of Essex in 1732. 6. Bay Bolton, whose earlier names were Brown Lusty and Whitefoot; bred by Sir Matthew Pierson, Bart., in Yorkshire, 1705, died in 1736. Sire of Fearnought, a dark brown horse foaled in 1724; and brother of the grey colt named Lamprey (1715-1728). These racers were also painted by Seymour. To these we may add Moorcock, Babraham, Young Cartouche, Bonny Black (painted also by Wootton), Lath, Carlisle, Second, Creeping Molly, Betty, Volunteer, Old Scar, and Conqueror. Mezzotints by R. Houston after Seymour and Spencer, 14 in. by 12 in., were published in 1755-1756. They are worth collecting. Lord CuUen's Arabian and Mr. C. Wilson's Chestnut Arabian, after Spencer, illustrate two of the Oriental sires, and a portrait of Dormouse (a very handsome brown-bay son of the Godolphin Arabian, foaled in 1738) shows how a new thoroughbred was being evolved. As for James Roberts, no collection of eighteenth-century racehorse- portraits can leave him out with fairness. In engravings after his work by Henry Roberts he appears as a draughtsman, not as a painter. Twelve of the horses that he drew were foaled in the seventeen-forties. They included the chestnut colt Little Driver, in the act of walking ; a black colt named Whynot ; another black colt, Sampson, galloping; the Earl of Portmore's grey horse Skim; Lord Strange's Sportsman, a bay, foaled in 1747; Lord Onslow's black colt Victorious; a brown thoroughbred called Antelope, 1748; Shake- speare, Grenadier, True Blue (a bay gelding), and Othello, held by a groom, and two gentlemen admiring him. SEYMOUR AND SOME OTHER PRIMITIVES 79 Spencer and Roberts were shut out from the Sports Exhibition of 1891, while Seymour was represented by six pictures. The Duke of Grafton lent " Mr. Delme's Foxhounds on the Hampshire Downs," and Sir Walter Gilbey sent four examples : " Hounds in Full Cry," " Hounds going into Covert," " The Young Pretender," painted in 1743 for the Duke of Somerset, and a race at Newmarket over the Beacon Course, in four-mile heats, for the King's loo-Guinea Cup. The picture represents the final heat, between Mr. O'Neil's Hero, a grey, and Lord Scarborough's Cademus, a bay horse. As for the sixth picture, it was another Newmarket race, the great Carriage Match run against time in 1750 on August 29th. A bet of a thousand guineas was made that four horses should draw a carriage with four running wheels, and a person in it or upon it, nineteen miles in sixty minutes. Four sportsmen took part in this adventure. The Earl of March (afterwards Duke of Queensberry) and the Earl of Eglintowne offered the wager, and it was accepted by Theobald Taafe and Andrew Sproule. Three of the horses had won plates, and the fourth also was bred and trained for racing. The two leaders carried about eight stone, including their harness, saddle, and riders; each wheel-horse about a stone less; and the chaise with a boy in it weighed about twenty-four stones. There was much excite- ment at the beginning of the race, for the horses ran away with their jockeys through four miles; then settled bravely to their work, and covered the nineteen miles in fifty-three minutes and twenty-seven seconds. Seymour tried to paint the running away, and his picture became very hard and stiff. But engravings from it were very popular. A repetition of this picture was bought by Sir Joshua Reynolds, and sold at his auction. A repetition, no doubt by Seymour himself, because the original picture was commissioned by the Duke of Queensberry, and it remained in the Queensberry collection till it was bought at Christie's by Sir Walter Gilbey, in July 1897. Reference will be made in a later chapter to several old prints after Seymour which herald Henry Aiken ; and if any person wants to learn from prints and pictures the history of English stables, let him not forget James Seymour. Last of all, Gilbey attributed to this artist several works which are " speculative." One of them he describes, and says that it was engraved and published by John Bodger, in 1791, and that the print, 27 in. x 19 in., was dedicated to the Prince of Wales, and pulled upon silk as well as upon paper. I cannot find a print resembling Gilbey 's description, which brings before the mind's eye a racecourse scene so crowded with important portraits, and with horses 8o BRITISH SPORTING ARTISTS and jockeys at exercise, that Seymour must have had a collaborator. Mr. Fores has a coloured print drawn and engraved by John Bodger, an attractive composition dedicated to the Prince of Wales ; but it differs in many respects from Gilbey's description. In both there is a gig harnessed to white horses. Ill We pass on to a semi-primitive named T. Gooch, who based his early style on Seymour. On my desk is a photograph showing one of his first portraits, a racehorse with his jockey up, in profile with his head towards our left hand ; hills in the far distance ; and on our right the end of an ugly brick wall, laid in courses that disobey perspective. The beautiful unity of a fine model is lost because the play of light and shade upon it is overdone; and though the painter tries to prove that his jockey's legs rest against curving ribs, the thoroughbred is shallow and rather flat. But the head is drawn and modelled with skill and charm, and there is some feeling for the wondrous electric energy that a fine racehorse circulates. The promise in this picture was fulfilled within its limits. Gooch was warmly praised by the Old Sporting Magazine, and the Royal Academy accepted his work from 1781 to 1802. In all seventy-six of his pictures were hung. As a rule they were portraits of dogs and hunters. In 1790 Gooch had a dozen pictures in the R.A., and four years later he had thirteen there ! They must have been small in size, for no Academician complained. The fortunate thirteen had a hunting piece among them, harriers and the death of a hare. In 1789 Gooch was in at the death with foxhounds; and another exhibit of his was described as the " Portrait of a Shooting Horse with Pointers." In 1800 his picture may have been unique in the history of sport; it was described as " The Ox who won the plate at Lyndhurst Races, going round a course of nearly two miles in eight minutes." Does anyone know if the race itself was represented ? Gooch painted also " The Life of a Racehorse in Six Stages," exhibited in 1783 (an early date for this appeal) ; and this work, or one like it, was engraved in aquatint by Gooch himself, and published as a folio by Edward Jeffery, in 1792, with an Essay by Dr. Hawksworth, " tending to excite a benevolent conduct to the Brute Creation." The six plates were entitled : " When a Foal with his Dam "; " When a Colt breaking "; " After running a Race and winning "; " As a Hunter going out to the Chase " ; " As a Post-chaise Horse on the Road "; and " His Dissolution." o -^ li. "&■ si •J ;3 ilJb: UJ CO r? CO O -C;, CO a, ■-0. 5 00 -s. ^ W e)_i|_ - u a '>, SEYMOUR AND SOME OTHER PRIMITIVES 8i Gooch seems to have been a rolling stone, a man of wayward moods, with no wish to have a settled home. In nineteen years he changed his address eight times. After trying Knightsbridge he lived at two addresses in Half Moon Street; then in Chapel Street, Mayfair, and at two places in Padding- ton, Winchester Row and Southampton Row. These were the last of his London addresses. Retiring into the country, he chose Alresford in Hants, and then Lyndhurst, where history leaves him among the trees of the New Forest. It is difficult to find his best work. Four painters more should be compared with Seymour by careful students. One of them is the elder Dean Wolstenholme (i 757-1 837); another, John Sartorius (about 1 700-1 780); and the third and fourth are Francis Sartorius (1734-1804), and his son J. N. Sartorius (1755-1828). Many persons are confused by the two Wolstenholmes. They have the same Christian name. Dean, and the son in his first period produced work very like his father's. Perhaps he may be called C. D. At the British Museum a photograph can be seen of a picture called " The Half-Way House," signed clearly C. D. Wolstenholme. A catalogue fact is useful; but the younger man did not always put in the *' C." The father was an amateur who wished to mend his lot after losing three suits in Chancery over some property at Waltham. A Yorkshire gentleman by birth, he passed his early life away from his native county, looking forward to a life of leisure, and very keen as a sportsman. He knew by heart both Essex and Hertfordshire, and was particularly fond of Cheshunt, and Turnford, and Waltham Abbey. Like a good many sportsmen of his day, he sketched now and then for amuse- ment, and such sketching is very like amateur acting ; when it has talent it has also a lively, pleasing confidence that disappears for a time as soon as professional study makes the mind conscious of the hard and various difficulties to be overcome. Dean Wolstenholme had a light hand with a pencil, and a good eye for sporting incidents. Sir Joshua Reynolds admired some of his quick sketches, and said that one day he would be a painter; but when Wolstenholme — at the age of forty, if you please — was driven by the stress of need to turn his hobby into a profession, he passed from a sham fight into a hard and long battle. Entirely self-taught, he did his best in a manly and fearless temper, but neither art nor sport gained half enough from his talents. In this book he is represented by his masterpiece, The Epping Forest Hunt, 181 1. It has many merits, and proves that its painter would have been a big master if his technical knowledge had been adequate. At the age of forty-six the Royal Academy accepted one of his pictures, 82 BRITISH SPORTING ARTISTS "Coursing"; and afterwards, in twenty-one years, he was represented there by twenty-six pictures. In 1803 he was living at Turnford, Cheshunt, but next year, when his picture at the R.A. was Fox-hunting, his address was 4 East Street, Red Lion Square, London. There was variety in his choice of subjects. From the Epping Forest Hunt, and similar pictures, he passed to a " View of the interior of Mr. Harrison's Veterinary Shop," and also to a " Portrait of Mr. J. Goldham performing the Austrian broad exercise with two swords, at speed." In 1807 there was " A view of the Golden Lane genuine beer brewery." Yes, genuine beer, showing that modernism with its adulterations had begun to emerge from old-fashioned honesty. Wolstenholme seems to have been celebrated for interior views, for he exhibited one of " The six-stall stable at the Finsbury Repository " (1808), and another (1824) of " The Riding School belonging to The Light Horse Volunteers, with portraits of horses, etc." Brewery horses attracted him, and in 1810 he painted and exhibited " portraits of two horses; a dray horse, the property of H. Meux, Esq., and hunters with hounds stopping to refresh at a public house, returning from hunting." " A Return from Hunting by Moonlight " belongs to the same year; so does a coaching picture on the Edmonton Road. In 1809 he had four paintings at the Royal Academy, two of fox-hunting, the portrait of a charger in the City Light Horse, and " The Leap of the Stag," a suggestive title. Four paintings were catalogued also in 181 3, and one of them brings us back to the JoUiffe family : " Portrait of Mr. Jolliffe's hounds and horses waiting by appointment at Merstham Church." Lord Hylton has two examples in London of the elder Wolstenholme 's work. One is a chestnut mare named Mystery, a hunter, in a park, with a withered old tree on our right, and hills and downs in the distance. The other is a dark chestnut mare with her foal. Neither of these pictures can be judged fairly because their colour has darkened very much, as in many other pictures by this painter. Glazing is always apt to deepen in tone, and Dean Wolstenholme seems to have glazed several times. Lord Hylton has another Wolstenholme, also very dark; it represents the great racehorse Trumpator at a drinking-trough in the shade of trees, attended by several dogs. A black-and-white greyhound is lapping out of a bucket, with a pug close by; and there is an Irish water-spaniel near a felled tree on the right. Trumpator is in profile with his head turned and directed towards the left; and in the distance, on the right, is a dim view of Merstham House. Wolstenholme painted some cattle pictures ; there are three in the collection SEYMOUR AND SOME OTHER PRIMITIVES 83 of Mr. Fred Banks, whose Catalogue of the Old Sporting Magazine is well known. A great many persons believe that our sporting artists gave their whole time to sporting subjects, losing touch with variety, with the natural law of variation. Yet, from Barlow's work to that of Mr. Munnings, variety of appeal has been the aim of every notable painter who has been associated with sport. Wolstenholme's cattle pieces have the interest of dead plays, art having gone away from them; but they help us to know what our predecessors liked. As a last note on this man's painting, let us take a set of four hunting scenes of a well-chosen size, not small enough to look like sportive postage stamps in old frames, nor big enough to be self-assertive. There are mistakes of perspective in the relative sizes of hounds placed on receding planes of primitive composition ; and some ot them are elongated, as in hunting pieces by Abraham Hondius. But an equestrian group here and there is put in with breadth, and the landscapes are better than those of the Sartorius family. They are vigorous, and show a liking for hilly land, and far horizons, and the charm and weight of trees. In one picture a thunderstorm is gathering over a fine countryside; and if most of the hounds were omitted, together with a galloping huntsman who has crossed a streamlet, the impression would be impressive as a study from nature. There is a depth in this primitive that I do not find in his son, C. D. Wolstenholme, who was trained to be a painter, and whose work is much better known to sportsmen. At first the son resembles his father, and then he is taken up into the flood-tide movement that culminates in the Landseer-Herring period. Like many painters devoted to sport, Dean Wolstenholme lived to a ripe old age; but he painted little during the last ten years of his life, between seventy and eighty. His son buried him in Old St. Pancras churchyard. John Sartorius had much in common with Dean Wolstenholme, being an amateur who worked for a living, and who remained an amateur till he died at about the same age, but at a much earlier date. His father was Jacob Christopher Sartorius, a Nuremberg engraver, and John was born in Nurem- berg about 1700. It is not known when he left Bavaria for England, but in 1723 he painted for Mr. Thomas Panton the portrait of a very noted mare, Molly, a small racer, not very fast, but with wonderful staying power. She won twenty stiff races, and her owner was so proud that he became unreasonable, passing from sport into cruelty. He wagered that Molly on the same day would run two long heats with a rest of only two hours between them. New- market was chosen for this ordeal, and a date fixed. On November 2nd, 1723, 84 BRITISH SPORTING ARTISTS Molly would be matched in her first heat against the Duke of Bolton's colt Terror; and two hours later she would meet another horse from the same stables, named Badger. But the mare's pluck and stamina had been impaired by earlier contests; all at once, while running her first match, she was taken ill, and died there and then, almost on the course, between the stand and the rubbing- house. Who can estimate the overstrain of old races run in heats, often over a distance that exceeded four miles, though horses had to carry too much weight as a rule ? Francis Sartorius painted a famous race run at Newmarket on April 20th, 1767, and the four horses in it were supposed to bear featherweights because they carried no more than 8 st. 7 lbs. each over the Beacon Course.^ In those days ten and twelve stone were the usual penalties. For some reason that is hard to find the Sartoriuses, from the time of poor Molly to our own days, have attracted more attention than they deserve. It is easy to like the history in their work, and to recognise their sincerity, but they never feel that great and varied movement in art which culminates between 1750 and the death of Turner. Only one picture by John Sartorius was accepted by the Royal Academy, in 1780, at the very end of his life, when he was living at 108 Oxford Street. His portrait of the Duke of Bokon's brown colt Looby, foaled in 1728, is well known, as it is illustrated by the Tauntons in their books on famous racehorses. Looby is galloping from left to right, in stiff rocking-horse fashion, but, looked at as a primitive study, it may be displaced by some of John's later work, like the Duke of Kingston's chestnut colt, Careless, painted in 1758. He exhibited at the Free Society from 1768 to 1780. Two racing pictures in 1769 showed how Bay Malton beat Otho at Newmarket, and how Gimcrack and Bellario were scraped by grooms after a sweat. A hunting piece, three years later, was accepted, and the portrait of a racehorse named Harlequin. Francis Sartorius was taught by his father, and handed on the prim Sartorius manner. Yet some work by Wolstenholme the First has been attributed to him, and even sold at auction under his name ! Recently four Wolstenholme hunting scenes passed through this adventure, interesting their purchaser greatly. Francis was always too lucky. In competition with Stubbs he should have had no vogue at all, yet his patrons were very numerous. In his day favourite animals of every sort had their portraits painted, and Francis was befriended by this fashion. Between 1775 and 1790 he sent his mild work to 1 Lord Rockingham's Malton, first ; Sir J. Moore's King Herod, second ; Lord Boling- broke's Ting, third ; and Mr. Shafto's Askam, fourth. So If — a ^ O o> J-' w . >,UJ ^ Q- . = ^ >. 5 SEYMOUR AND SOME OTHER PRIMITIVES 85 the Royal Academy, and a few examples were accepted, including a pair of the King's coach-horses. '^ The Society of Artists hung six of his works between 1778 and 1791. There were two noted racehorses, " Daniel (late Hemp)," and Cottager. At the Free Society, between 1773 and 1780, he exhibited twenty-two canvases, including a portrait of Eclipse (1780), some brood mares and foals, some hacks, a piece of cattle, and a " horse match." A few prints after this artist are all that a collector needs. He painted the Duke of Grafton's Antinous, foaled in 1758; the Duke of Cumberland's Herod, foaled in the same year; and Mr. Latham's Snap, a brown son of Snip, bred about 1750. Snap ran only four races, defeating Marske twice. Sweep- stakes once, and winning the Free Plate at York. Lord Rosebery has a portrait of Snap by this primitive painter. Waxey also is among the prints after Francis Sartorius, and Cardinal Ruff, and Bay Malton. Recently a sporting critic said : " Of course, J.N. Sartorius is the only one of the family that counts." No doubt he went farther, but he did not go far enough to enter the modernising phases of art. J. N. ought to have learnt much more about landscape painting, much more also about figure drawing ; and the semi-primitive are often irritating, while the wholly primitive are not. J. N. should have seen that his rocking-horse gallops were too stiff and too ugly to be tolerated at the beginning of the nineteenth century. He is repre- sented in this book by two of his hunts, and from among his racing pictures one may choose ten : — 1. Sir Charles Bunbury's Grey Diomed (1785), by Diomed out of Grey Dorimant. 2. Eclipse, Jack Oakley up; composed from studies made by Francis Sartorius. 3. Smolensko, T. Goodison up; winner of the Derby in 1791. 4. The Famous Match between Sir H. Temple Fane's Hambletonian and Joseph Cookson's Diamond, a son of Highflyer, 3000 guineas a side, New- market Craven Meeting over the Beacon Course, March 25th, 1799; 4 miles 2 furlongs. Hambletonian won by a head and neck. The race is followed closely on horseback by a number of enthusiasts. It was won in 8| minutes. In this picture the galloping action is not quite in accord with J. N.'s routine. A critic seems to have said to him, " I say, those hind feet look glued to the 1 At Cumberland Lodge, near Windsor, there is a painting by F. Sartorius of two State Carriage-Horses, both dun-coloured, with gold-mounted hsirness. A boy stands at a stable- door, which is open ; landscape background. 86 BRITISH SPORTING ARTISTS ground. Can't you do something ? " And something was done, for Diamond's near hind foot is a trifle Ufted. 5. Match between Blue Cap and Wanton against Mr. H. Meynell's Hounds, at Newmarket, over the Beacon Course. 6. Some coursing scenes. 7. Four shooting scenes engraved by Scott. 8. Ascot, Oatlands Sweepstakes, aquatinted by J. Edy, June 28th, 1792, 2o| in. by 14I in. Early Ascot prints are uncommon. A cloudy sky, and park-like background; the winning post on our left, and three horses racing towards it, followed by a fourth, and by two excited spectators. Four excited men on foot, in the foreground, seem to be on the course itself. 9. Pictures of brood mares with their colts, with backgrounds of neat fluffy trees. One of these paintings, 35^ in. by 27I in., is dated 1791, and shows the beautiful colt Trumpator with his dam Calash, a daughter of Herod. In another picture, dated 1797, and not improved in style, there are three brood mares, two colts, and a filly by the hunter-like Buzzard. One colt is by Buzzard out of Maria, and the other by Pot-8-os out of Hunka-Munka.^ 10. Portraits of Hunters, so strongly built that J. N.'s unmuscular slim men look funny by their side or on their backs. J. N. could never put a vigorous body inside a suit of clothes, perhaps because he had never drawn and painted from the nude. If his hunters are true in their proportions, and other painters of his time seem to confirm him, the hunting world of the eighteenth century had a special breed of weight-carriers, differing greatly from the hunters painted to-day by Mr. Munnings. One cannot suppose that a Jack Mytton would get enough excitement on such hunters as J. N. Sartorius painted for Christopher Wilson, for instance. Hunting was leisurely during the eighteenth century, and much heavier than it is now, the country being imperfectly drained and cultivated. It was no uncommon thing for horses to founder. As regards J. N.'s pictures at the Royal Academy, seventy were accepted and hung from 1781 to 1824 inclusive. His hunting and his racing pictures cannot have been liked by the Academicians, as only seven were accepted : — 1. 1787. Going out in the Morning. 2. 1787. The Chase. 1 J. N. Sartorius painted two portraits of Buzzard for Christopher Wilson, one in 1793, the other in 1797 ; and they differ so much in structural character that one or other must be a bad portrait. Both are in profile and look towards the right. CO cc O . I- 5 oc 5 < 5 CO s . -^ -i i >.? -Q < ^1 Ul-S o.s CO 5 oi z S SEYMOUR AND SOME OTHER PRIMITIVES 87 3. 1795. Death of the Hare. 4. 1801. Portrait of Diamond. 5. 1808. Flying Leap : Fox dying. 6. 1809. Lord Foley's Comrade beating Mr. Goodison's Foxbury and Mr. Butler's Epsom, for the Plate over Epsom, 1808. 7. 1 8 14. Portrait of Smolensko. On the other hand, the Academicians hung the portrait of a cow belonging to a gentleman in Essex; a landscape in which J. N. painted a newly invented carriage; a portrait of Mr. Westcar's fat heifer; and the portrait of a remarkable three-year-old deer, owned by Lord Derby. To these I must add portraits of trotting horses, shooting ponies, hunters, pet dogs, and two Morlandish subjects, " A Straw Yard," and " Inside a Stable," dated 1792. One notes with pleasure J. N.'s interest in shooting, as in " Spaniels flushing a Woodcock," 1809, and " A Gentleman shooting," 1795. But J. N. is old history, not a memorable figure in the gradual progress of modern painting. And this applies also to his son, J. F. Sartorius, who carried on his family style, without learning half enough from the genuine innovators, Stubbs, Morland, Rowlandson, Ibbetson, James Ward, Ben Marshall, and Henry Aiken. The Sartoriuses are like those very circumspect diplomatists who fail to be great because they fear to take risks when ample opportunities test their daily routine. James Ward and Stubbs were always willing to endanger their success. Ward, eager " to relieve his fecundity by creating worlds," competed against Rubens, and once he imagined that he had beaten his master. His rivals laughed, but the brave little man was right in trying to do a great deal more than he could ever achieve. His " Bulls Fighting " is not within bowshot of Rubens' vigour and magic, but it has the qualities of daring enterprise that the Sartorius family evaded. Once, and only once, perhaps J. F. Sartorius had some weeks of adventure. He painted a picture of coursing in Hatfield Park, with portraits of horses belong- ing to that splendid Marchioness of Salisbury who refused to give up sport, so she rode daily in her park till she was eighty-six. Velazquez would have been inspired by this Diana, and I wish that Raeburn had painted her in the saddle. J. F. did his best, and his picture was at the Royal Academy in 1806. Only twenty-six of his canvases were accepted by the Academicians between 1797 and 1829; ^^^ th^y showed a falling-off in ambition after 1806. Their titles became very humble : " A Partridge," " A Snipe," " A Brace of Ptarmigans," 88 BRITISH SPORTING ARTISTS " Golden Plover and Snipes," " Partridges and Snipes," " Grousing, with portraits of favourite Dogs," and so forth. The Dictionary of National Biography notes, with some surprise, that J. F. worked " with less success than his father as to the number of his patrons, though his thorough knowledge of sport is exemplified in his sporting pictures." Well, sporting knowledge is art's servant, not her master, and the Sartorius family had enjoyed a longer and better run than their merits as painters had justified. The first virtue that sporting knowledge should put into art is foreward-going courage, a liking for adventure and its risks; and a new school of painters was in the saddle when J. N. and J. F. declined to employ their pigments and brushes with enough enterprising sportsmanship. Though our country has been the most virile in Europe, her painters far and away too frequently have shown a fondness for tameness and prettiness which less virile nations have scorned. How to explain this fact is a very hard nut to crack; but it is certain that British sport in art should illustrate those qualities which make and preserve a colonising people. When we remember that the Sartoriuses inherited Marlborough, and that J. N. lived through the great historic period from 1775 to Waterloo, the tameness of their style may be called a slacker in national service. Why, then, have these artists been greatly admired ? CHAPTER IV JOHN WOOTTON, 1678 ( ? )-I765 I It is not easy to write about an artist who has been cold-shouldered by public galleries, and whose pictures hang in private collections. Inevitably he becomes little known. To a great many persons who are fond of art Wootton is not even a name. A few months ago a young painter said to me, " Wootton ? Oh 1 I seem to remember a jockey of that name." Even at the Sports Exhibition, thirty-one years ago, Wootton was repre- sented by only four pictures; a portrait of Flying Childers, with Figures, contributed by Mr. E. Tattersall; a portrait of the Bloody-Shouldered Arabian, lent by the Duke of Leeds; a Newmarket scene, the Duke of Devonshire's collection; and a large canvas from Windsor Castle, a Stag Hunt in Windsor Park, painted in 1734. This choice was not satisfying. Welbeck Abbey could have improved it, and Althorp also, and Badminton, Longleat, and Goodwood House. The truth is that only one thing can do justice to John Wootton — a public exhibition of his best works, including his landscapes and his battlepieces. Not enough can be done for Wootton by art editors and their blockmakers. Many a painter's work is easy to illustrate, and sometimes it looks so pleasing in half-tone prints, or in photogravures, that students are disappointed when they see the original paintings. Wootton is not a painter who is flattered by photography. Some of his work has become too dark for illustrations in black- and-white; and some is too big to be correctly focused in situ by a camera. At Longleat the Woottons are hung high and cannot be taken down, like the great hunting episodes at Badminton and Althorp. ^ The plates in this chapter are much better than any others which have been published of this master; but it is true to say of them what Lord Morley has said about Acts of Parlia- ment : they are compromises, and second-best. Still, it cannot be helped. 1 Two illustrations are given of the Entrance Hall at Althorp, where the Woottons are hung constructurally. 89 90 BRITISH SPORTING ARTISTS Though Wootton has been unjustly neglected for a century, he has had many admirers among artists. Sir Edwin Landseer was one of his devotees, and Mr. A. J. Munnings, a modernist, is another. Sir Edwin's favourite Wootton was a picture of a small size, at Badminton, representing an episode from the vanished sport of partridge stalking, a sport which Barlow had called up into pictorial presence. Wootton may have wished to prove that he could outdo his forerunner. If so. Barlow's composition is preferable; it has freedom, grace, liveliness, fresh air, and the partridges, well placed and drawn, like the woodcock, have an alert bird among them; while Wootton is hampered by a small canvas, and his pointer is too big to be in scale with a chosen subject. The dog, creeping forward heavily and stealthily, followed at a distance by men with nets, is certainly alive, an excellent study, but too low on the canvas, and also very near to a partridge that is uncommonly tame and trustful. A good stretch of foreground between him and the frame would be as valuable here as it is in " The Spanish Pointer," a famous work by George Stubbs. But Landseer did not criticise the composition; he gave his whole attention to Wootton's pointer, and spoke of it not only as far better than any picture of his own, but also as the best animal painting he had ever seen. " You can see the dog crawling along to the birds," he added. There is also a crawling dog in Barlow's charming composition. Is it surprising that Landseer admired Wootton ? They had nothing in common. Wootton appeals to us as a fighter who conquers by hard effort what he desires to win; and his best pictures are deepened by concentrated and sustained emotion. Even when he fails, and fails badly, it is because he has attacked certain difficulties which many a painter would have attempted to outflank. Frequently, for example, he was fascinated by too much size, viewing sport in relation to square yards of canvas as though his portraits of horses were more useful as pictures for a room, and also better as art, when painted life-size. His knowledge of anatomy was inadequate for this life-size portraiture, like his brushwork, which had not enough suppleness and mastery. There is also the fact that very large pictures, besides being very troublesome to keep clean, claim overmuch space on walls for an indefinite number of years, as though their artistic value will never be outri vailed by later painters. When vast canvases are chosen, a painter can justify his choice in one way only — by producing masterpieces. A poet who turns from the writing of good lyrics and sonnets to compose an epic of great length, is much more likely to explode his reputation than to improve his fame. ENTRANCE HALL AT ALTHORP. NORTHAMP- TON, showing how the Pictures by WOOTTON are framed structurally in the walls JOHN WOOTTON, i678(?)-i765 91 Let us note, too, that Wootton's courage, his good soldierly firmness, does not come from a masterful self-confidence, like the same quality in George Stubbs. It springs by reaction from vigilant self-criticism. Instead of having enough confidence in his own good gifts, Wootton seeks allies, foreign allies, and uses their help with excessive awe of their authority, though it has no rightful place in his English feeling for English country life and sport. Now and then he is influenced even by Salvator Rosa, and his choice of foreign pictures for his own home is not always good, as we shall see. According to the Dictioimry of National Biography, it was " during the latter part of his career " that Wootton " painted many landscapes in the style of Claude and Caspar Poussin." That he painted them also at a much earlier date, between 1721-1725, when he was in his first period, is proved by Ceorge Vertue's evidence, which relates how he " bravely distinguished himself " then in " paintings of landscape, very much like the pictures by Caspar Poussin, both as to invention, design, and colouring." Wootton had " studied from several pieces of that master's painting," and had " perfectly entered into Poussin's manner," and thus away from his own genius. It is necessary to give these facts, not as criticisms, but as a part of the autobiography that Wootton put into his productions. Landseer's autobiography in art is opposed to this. He forms his own style with a slick and sleek facility, becoming a skater on canvas rather than a painter. He is never fond of oil-colours, and his pictures have a surface which is often icelike in smoothness and texture, his brushwork never adapting itself changefully to different needs and circumstances, as playwrights do when their minds pass creatively from one character to another, then back again, and on to a third actor. Landseer is always Landseer, facile and pretty, often super- ficial, and so eager to be known as England's ^sop that he made his favourite animals too human, as though they had reason to be ashamed of their own breeds and species. Through more than a generation we follow his vogue, and see in Landseer the most beloved painter that our country has ever welcomed. Engravings after his pictures, usually too large and too sweet, had a wonderful circulation; and society loved Landseer the man, was charmed by his pleasant singing, and his talent as a story-teller, and the kindness with which he painted lapdogs, or made sketches for scrap albums, or sold pictures at less than their market value. The Court was fond of him; the Queen took lessons from him; and Landseer himself was never sated by excessive admiration. In this he resembled Meissonier, and both of them would have benefited greatly if their 93 BRITISH SPORTING ARTISTS fame had been opposed by genuine criticism instead of by professional envy. Action and reaction being equal and opposite, both Landseer and Wootton passed from their popularity into complete neglect. But now they are rising again. With all his faults, Landseer has a genius whose happier hours belong to all time. A great number of sweet mistakes are dead with the fashion that insisted upon having them; but sportsmen are recovering what is true and fine, and there is enough of it to keep Landseer among the masters of sport in art. II Wootton's parents do not appear in his biography, and the year given for his birth by the Dictmiary of National Biography, 1678 ( ? ), may be somewhat late, though it is given twice by George Vertue. Horace Walpole might easily have collected a great many biographical facts, as he was among Wootton's contemporaries; but although he believed that Wootton drew and painted horses and dogs " with consummate skill, fire and truth," he scampered through a very brief notice, leaving all matters of research to some poor editor. Dalla- way added a set of facts, but a picture of Wootton the man cannot be drawn because the material is too scrappy and too patchy. The late Sir Walter Gilbey chose 1685 as a possible year for his birth, and then remembered that John Wyck was the painter's first master. As Wyck died at Mortlake in the year 1700, Wootton must have been a boyish student if his birth is fixed towards 1685. Mr. Baillie-Grohman gives Wootton's dates as 1690 (?)-i765, though there is no reason for all this hesitation. In the British Museum there is a catalogue of the sale of pictures that Wootton held in London four years before his death, when his eyesight had failed greatly, and his working days were over. In this valuable relic of his art and taste I find not only that Wootton treasured examples of Wyck's painting, but also that he collaborated with Wyck in two battlepieces, which he in 1761 deemed good enough to be sold by auction. So the birth-year could not have been so late as 1685, and it may well have been earlier than 1678. From John Wyck, probably, Wootton got his first passion for foreign art, and soon it was enlarged by travel abroad. When painting racehorses at Newmarket he was befriended by Henry, the Third Duke of Beaufort, who liked him so much that he sent his young painter to study in Rome. What Wootton did in Rome I cannot learn, but on his return to England he won a great reputation, and earned so much money that he was able to buy and LADY HENRIETTA HARLEV. 30 ins. 25 Ins., painted by JOHN WOOTTON in 1716 for £8 12 0. The Duke of Portlands Collection at Welbeok Abbey. Worksop. JOHN WOOTTON, i678(?)-i765 93 improve a fine house in Cavendish Square, which he decorated himself, greatly to the enjoyment of his friends. Vertue writes : " Mr. John Wootton by his assiduous application, and the prudent manage- ment of his affairs, raised his reputation and fortune to a great height, being well esteemed for his skill in landscape painting amongst the professors of art, and in great vogue and favour with many persons of greatest Quality. His often visiting of Newmarket in the seasons produced him much employment in painting racehorses, for which he had good prices, 40 guineas for a horse, or 20 for one of a half-length cloth. This season in April when the King visited Newmarket, Cambridge, at table while he was there, with several noblemen, the conversation turning upon remarkable horses and paintings, his Majesty was pleased to say that Mr. Wootton made him pay 20 guineas for a half- length picture of a horse, which he expressed was dear. A noble Duke present then answered it was the price that he paid, and was usual. By this it may seem, the King was not over well pleased." Let us compare these prices with Richardson's, with Kneller's, and with those of Stubbs and Sir Joshua Reynolds. Richardson charged £10 155. for a head and shoulders, and ^21 10^. for a three-quarter length figure. Kneller, so I learn from Mr. Richard W. Goulding, received £^0 for a whole length of William the Third ; 60 guineas for a whole length of Lady Henrietta Harley, standing by her dun mare; and ,(^32 55. for a half-length canvas. Welbeck Abbey has kept a record of the fees charged by Wootton for several of his earlier pictures. The portrait of the thoroughbred filly Bonny Black, painted in 1715, cost ^12 18^. (40 in. by 50 in.); an equestrian portrait of Lady Henrietta Harley, dated 171 6, and measuring 30 in. by 25 in., cost £S I2S.; for another portrait of the same great horsewoman, hunting the hare on Onvell Hill, painted also in 1716, but on a canvas 83 in. by 116 in., the price was £^2 ^5^-'> ^^^ its companion piece cost the same sum, and represented Lady Harley hawking in Wimpole Park.^ As for Reynolds and his prices, he wrote a letter about them to a Liverpool gentleman named Daulby, which is quoted as follows in Joseph Mayer's Memoir of George Stubbs : — ^ " I am just returned from Blenheim; consequently did not see your letter till yesterday, as they neglected sending it to me. My prices for a head is thirty-five guineas; as far as the knees, seventy; and for a whole-length 1 These details have never been pubhshed before, and I owe them to Mr. Goulding. 2 The letter itself was among Mayer's MSS. 94 BRITISH SPORTING ARTISTS one hundred and fifty. It requires in general three sittings, about an hour and a half each time ; but, if the sitter chooses it, the face could be begun and finished in one day ; it is divided into separate times for the convenience and ease of the person who sits; w^hen the face is finished, the rest is done v^^ithout troubling the sitter. ... I beg leave to return my thanks for the favourable opinion you entertain of me, and am, with greatest respect, " Your most obedient humble Servant, "J. R." (Joshua Reynolds). These are higher prices than Wootton's, but Reynolds belonged to a younger generation, being only forty-two when Wootton died in 1765 at the age of eighty-five. But since their productive work belongs to the same century we can look upon them as contemporaries, remembering that prices are useful to us as biographical facts. Our forefathers, at least as much as we, were guided by common sense in what they did, and their payments are criticisms passed on Wootton, Kneller, Richardson, Reynolds, and Stubbs, a quintette of contrasts. There was no industriaUsm to produce millionaires and a well-organised speculation in pictures. Agriculture was England's greatest industry, and landowners were the principal patrons of art. Consequently, I am very much interested when Joseph Mayer proves " that whilst the great Sir Joshua asked but seventy guineas for a portrait ' as far as the knees,' Stubbs' commissions ran to one hundred guineas each. Nay, it seems probable that Sir Joshua paid for his (i. e. Stubbs') picture of the ' War Horse ' half as much again as he himself would have asked for a portrait of the like size." But Reynolds and Stubbs lived to enjoy a time of picture exhibitions, at once a popular advertisement and a great open market; while Wootton was unaided by these benefits, dying three years before the Royal Academy was founded. Though his prices were smaller than those of Reynolds and Stubbs, they were as high in their relation to differing circumstance; and they help to prove that sporting landowners of the eighteenth century were good patrons to painters of differing aims. From time to time Wootton must have been anxious about his business affairs, for many of his pictures came under the hammer at auctions, com- peting against his current vogue. Let me give an example from the sale of Edward Earl of Oxford, which began on Monday the 8th of March, 1742, and realised in six days a total sum of ;£39o8 igs. 6d. Wootton's prices were below his own standard, according to a catalogue in the B.M. : — cc in a. Q. o < UJ 111 .• X 5 H ? Q -^ z ^ < l^ en '>, 11 O 5 o o z I o UJ C 51 ■; CD .5 < ■>;■ LU -« I s H S O '§ z - < ■: CO I, Q -i z D o X D_ 01 O I H _l < JOHN WOOTTON, i678(?)-i765 95 /^ 7 7 o : A Holy Family in a Landscape. ;(^i6 5 6 : A large Landscape with Figures and Animals, bought by Lord Holdernesse. ^3 o o : Head of Wootton by Dahl.^^ ;^ 5 5 o : A White Horse and its Companion Piece. £ S 8 o : View of Newmarket Course. £2 40: Small Landscape and Figures. £12 13 8 : A Sunset and its Companion Piece. ^13 o o : Landscape and Figures. £11 II o : Its Pendant. £21 o o : A Large Battle. It was bought by the Duke of Bedford, probably for his wife, who commissioned two fine pictures for Wootton in 1739. Vertue speaks of this matter : " Especially well done are two landscapes, one a morning, the other a setting sun, or evening piece, the first much in the style of Poussin, both with figures well touched and designed. They far exceed any pictures of Wootton's doing for taste, manner and colouring. These were made for the Duchess of Bedford, and will do Mr. W. much honour." Before we pass on to a general review of Wootton's pictures, let us analyse the catalogue of his auction, which was held in London, Thursday and Friday, March 12th and 13th, 1761. There was a sale also of his prints and drawings, but no catalogue having come down to us, we cannot learn what prints he collected or what drawings of his own were sold. Still, we are lucky to possess a catalogue of his sale of pictures. It is easy, and useful, to group under headings lots from the two days. Unluckily, there are no marginal notes giving the final bids; but much can be learnt about Wootton's tastes and limits by studying each group. He had too many copies on his walls, so it seems to me, sometimes after painters no longer accepted as high in rank. Mr. Goulding says of Wootton : " It would seem that he shared the prevalent taste for Italian works ; and he probably made purchases at the auctions held by Cock of pictures imported by Andrew Hay. For instance, at the sale of February 1 725-1 726, he bought a landscape with figures in water-colours by Patel for £2 55., and Cephalus and Procris by Francisque for six guineas." Yes, but to me his auction catalogue is disappointing, like a library that is not well chosen. ^ I take this to be the portrait referred to by Vertue as painted in 1723, when Wootton was forty-five : " Wootton in a cap by Dahl." 96 BRITISH SPORTING ARTISTS Wootton painted a few seaports and seascapes, like another of John Wyck's pupils, Sir Martin Beckman, and he had a German patron for whom he painted German hunts. For some reason which we will try to find, a good many of his racing pictures, portraits of famous horses, remained in his studio unsold. Then there is Wootton 's attitude towards English painters. I hoped to find that he liked Barlow, Cradock, Collins, and Joseph Highmore (1692-1780), whose feeling for paint and colour heralded Reynolds ; but his collection was not all patriotic. Ill British Painters. 1. Sketch by Sir James Thornhill for the Ceiling at Blenheim. 2. King Charles the First on a Dun Horse, after Vandyck, by Old Stone. 3. Half-length of the poet Matthew Prior by Hudson. 4. A set of four little seapieces by Peter Monamy (1670-1749). Monamy is not yet valued as he should be. At South Kensington he is represented by a bold and good picture. Pictures by John Wyck. 1. The March of King William. 2. Landscape and Figures. 3. Two Small Landscapes. 4. A Battle, and a Small Battle. 5. A Dog. Wootton After Wyck. 1. Five Horses and Dogs. 2. Four Horses and Grooms. 3. A Greyhound. In two battlepieces Wyck and his pupil work in collaboration. Battlepieces by Wootton. 1. The Duke of Cumberland on Horseback. This may be the portrait engraved in mezzotint by Baron, with CuUoden dimly seen behind. 2. Two Sketches of Battles. 3. The Duke of Richmond on Horseback at the Siege of Carlisle. 4. Two Sketches, the Battles of Lille and Tournai. 5. Three Sketches, the Battles of The Wood, and Blenheim and Oudenarde. 6. A Battle Sketch in the style of Borgognone. JOHN WOOTTON, i678(?)-i765 97 Horses, Dogs, and Hunting Pictures, by Wootton. 1. Foxhounds. 2. Two Pieces of Dogs. 3. Lord Boyne's Pointer. 4. The Duke of Hamilton's Pointer. 5. The Duke of St. Albans' Pointer. 6. The Earl of Oxford's Mastiff Lion. 7. Two Horses and a Pointer. 8. A Greyhound, and Two Pieces of Birds. 9. Hounds and Horses. 10. Upright View of Windsor Castle, with Figures and Dead Game. A Sketch. 11. Landscape with a German Hunt. 12. A German Hunt, being a Sketch for a Picture painted for Prince Lobkowitz. 13. Four Original Hunting Pictures painted for Lord Oxford, from which ^ prints were engraved. So the catalogue says, and Vertue, as we shall see, gives details of four Woottons engraved by Baron. Still, it is a surprise to find these pictures in Wootton's auction, because we must assume that Wootton bought them back, and it is not known that Lord Oxford in his lifetime sold any of his pictures. Further, they are not found in the sale catalogue of Lord Oxford's collection. 14. View of Northampton and Holdenby Castle, with Figures representing the Death of a Hare. 5. Two Views of Windsor Castle and a Stag Hunt. 16. View of the Rubbing House at Newmarket. 17. A Large Picture of the Bloody-Shouldered Arabian. 18. The Hampton Court Arabian belonging to George the First. 19. The Duke of Wharton's Horse Chanter. 20. The Duke of Devonshire's Horse Basto. 21. The Duke of Devonshire's Horse Scar. 22. The Earl of Crawford's Horse Greyhound. 23. The Duke of Devonshire's Horse Childers. 24. The Duke of Bolton's Horse Sweepstakes. 25. The Duke of Beaufort's Horse Little David. 26. The Duke of Beaufort's Horse Diamond, and Two Others. 27. Lord Crawford's Horse Crawford, presented by his Lordship to the Prince of Wales. H 98 BRITISH SPORTING ARTISTS As eight of these thoroughbreds have famous names, we have a right to ask Vi^hy their portraits remained in Wootton's house. Flying Childers had so great a popularity that no portrait of him, if a good likeness, not a decorative picture, should have remained unsold. Would a very busy painter, with large canvases always on his easels, paint for himself a big portrait of the Bloody- Shouldered Arabian .'' This famous racer had an equally famous son. Sweep- stakes, who appears also in Wootton's auction. He was the sire of O'Kelly's Old Tartar Mare, whose offspring, after she was twenty years old, brought 30,000 guineas to her owner. Her grandsire, then, had his fame increased by his descendants, so he continued to interest country gentlemen who collected portraits of well-remembered racehorses. I have suggested in an earlier chapter that Wootton's horses are pictures rather than likenesses; and this opinion was formed long before I came upon the catalogue of his own sale among the books in the British Museum. Mr. Goulding suggests that Wootton made duplicates thinking he would be able to copy them for collectors ; and he points out, in the final section of this chapter, that as many as nine or ten portraits of one horse, all in profile, but with some variations, have been attributed to Woottons' brush. Are these attributions to be accepted, one and all of them .? Can it be true that a man of genius repeated himself so frequently .'' For several reasons I cannot say yes to this question : — 1 . Woottons' racehorses, as a rule, do not look like faithful portraits, because they dominate too much over grooms and stablemen. If their scale were correct, we should be obliged to believe that thoroughbred horses of Wootton's time — and hunters also, note well — were generally taller than their present- day descendants, whereas they were much smaller. 2. A painter who repeats the same portrait many times, even with some variations, acts as a dull tradesman, not as a true artist; he accepts a deadening routine in order to earn money. 3. The variety in Wootton's art — it comprises landscapes, some seascapes, equestrian portraits, a few religious pictures, battlepieces, and a versatile delight in sport — proves not only that drudgery, monotonous routine, was hateful to him, but also that he was too busy as a genuine producer to deaden his mind and hand by trying to turn racehorse portraiture into a sort of factory trade. 4. He had two competitors in the racing world, Tillemans and Seymour, who were influenced by his work, who probably copied from him for practice, JOHN WOOTTON, i678(?)-i765 99 and who certainly painted from life some of the horses familiarly known to Wootton. We need an exhibition of these painted racing pictures; then all attribu- tions could be verified with scrupulous care. Who knows the " horses big as the life " ^ that Tillemans painted ? Have they been attributed to Wootton ? They were commissioned by sportsmen, nobles and country gentlemen. And is it not suggestive that it was Seymour, not Wootton, who appealed to those engravers and printsellers who satisfied the people's fondness for likenesses of celebrated horses .'' ^ Other Pictures by Wootton. 1. A Moonlight, and a Landscape with Figures. 2. Four Upright Landscapes with Figures. 3. An Evening. 4. Four small Heads : the Duke of Richmond, Gilbert Earl of Coventry, the Earl of Godolphin, and Lord Mansfield. 5. Two Seaports. 6. Louis XIV and the late Andrew Hay. 7. Two Lots described as " A Riding School." 8. " Perseus and Andromeda," an Academy Figure, and " Pamela." 9. Two Landscapes and a Seaport. 10. Two Landscapes and Figures in the style of S. Rosa. 11. A Seaport, and a View, Italian. 12. A Moonlight, and a View of Canewood. 13. Three Views with Figures. 14. Two sketches of Landscapes. 15. Landscape and a Seaport. 16. Long Landscape and Figures. 17. View of Newmarket Course, a Sketch. 18. A Wannock. 19. A Morning. Two Lots more with this title. 20. An Evening. Three pictures more with this title. 21. His Late Majesty (presumably George II) on Horseback. Writing about the year 1727-28, Vertue made two notes on an equestrian 1 George Vertue's evidence, about 1723. 2 Several racing pictures of the Wootton-Tillemans period are illustrated in this book for the purpose of inviting discussion. 100 BRITISH SPORTING ARTISTS portrait of the King painted by Wootton in collaboration with His Majesty's painter, Mr. Jarvis, who, says Vertue with envy, " had the good fortune to marry a gentlewoman with 15 or 20 thousand guineas." Wootton did the horse, and increased his reputation, while Jarvis " lost much the favour and interest at Court." One morning, as the second note relates, the Queen attended by several noblemen went from Kensington to Wootton's fine studio in Cavendish Square, " to see some horses belonging to the Prince and Lord Malpas lately painted by Mr. Wootton, also a great picture of his Majesty painted on horseback, a grey horse, for Lord Hubbard. The face of the King by Mr. Jarvis, and all the other parts by Mr. Wootton. The horse, etc., was very much approved of, but the King's [portrait], not thought to be like, was much spoke against from thence. ..." 22. View of Oxford. 23. Two Landscapes and Figures. Six Lots more with this title. 24. Upright Landscape and Figures. 25. Land Storm, and a View of Windsor. 26. Small Whole Length of Henry Duke of Beaufort. 27. Three Landscapes with Figures and Ruins. 28. Two " Upright Land Storms." 29. Landscape with Horses. 30. View from Canewood House over London. 31. Upright View of Holdenby Castle in Northamptonshire. 32. View of Chichester. 33. A Sunset. 34. An Evening, with Figures telling Fortunes. [On March 22nd, 1754, a Wootton landscape, with gipsies telling fortunes, was sold at a London auction for thirteen guineas. Perhaps Wootton bought it because the price was far below his own charge for pictures of the same importance. An artist feels disconcerted and harassed when his current prices are outflanked at public auctions attended by his patrons. I know of only two volumes of eighteenth-century auction catalogues, and Wootton's name appears in them often enough to suggest that he must have had pretty frequent reasons to fear this damaging competition. In Sir George Scharf's catalogue of the Duke of Bedford's collection, among several pictures by Wootton, there is one of gipsies grouped near a lady who is mounted on a white horse, and who o 'o UJ 5 e Its? JOHN WOOTTON, i678(?)-i765 loi allows her fortune to be told by a Romany woman. A cavalier stands beside his horse and looks on. The composition is remarkable also for an arch of rock that spans a road. This picture is 19I in. by 15I in. It was greatly admired by Scharf, who said : " Painted in rich colours, with figures in the costume and style of Rubens."] 35. Two Oval Landscapes. 36. Upright Landscape with Figures and Horses. 37. A Large Piece of Lions. This comes as a surprise. 38. Piece of Ruins with a Waterfall. 39. Oval Landscape and Figures, and an Upright One. 40. Small whole Length of His Late Majesty (perhaps George H). 41. Landscape with Figures fishing. 42. Sunset with Ruins and Figures. 43. Small Whole Length of the Duke of Richmond. 44. Landscape with Angelica and Medora. 45. Two Pieces of Architecture and Figures. 46. View of St. James's Park, with His Majesty and Prince Edward on Horseback, attended by Mr. Durell. 47. Two Upright Landscapes and Figures. 48. Landscape, with the Flight into Egypt. 49. The Prince of Wales, the Duke of Queensberry, and John Spencer, shooting near Windsor. 50. An Upright View with Ruins and Figures. 51. Large Landscape and Figures, with a Sea View. 52. The Spring. 53. Landscape with a Triumphal Arch, a Round Temple and Obelisk, a statue of Flora, and various other Figures. Copies by Wootton. 1. After Ricci, Our Saviour curing the Blind. 2. After Caspar Poussin, Eleven Landscapes. 3. After Claude Lorrain, Two Landscapes. 4. After Filippo Lauri, a Landscape. 5. After Nicolas Poussin, The Holy Family, 6. After the picture of Blind Behsarius begging for Alms, belonging to the Duke of Devonshire. 102 BRITISH SPORTING ARTISTS Some Copies by other Artists, Usually Unnamed. 1. St. Cecilia after P. Cortona. 2. The Nativity after Carlo Cignani. 3. Two Pictures of Ruins and Figures, after Francesco Pannini. 4. The Altar Piece at Chelsea Hospital, after Sebastiano Ricci. 5. Aurora after Guido. 6. Galatea after Luca Giordano. 7. A Bacchanal after Filippo Lauri. 8. Madonna and Child after F. Solimene. 9. Several Ruins and Figures after Viviano. ID. Three Goats' Heads, by Dubois after Berghem. 1 1 . Landscape after Bartolomme. And several other copies, including one after Rubens, and religious pictures after N. Poussin, Carlo Maratti, and Trevisani, either Angelo or Francesco. Both Trevisanis were Wootton's contemporaries.^ Pictures by Foreign Painters. 1. Claude, Landscape and Figures. 2. S. Ricci, the Last Supper. 3. Rousseau, Upright Landscape with a Waterfall. 4. Teniers, Landscape and Figures. 5. Van de Velde, Several Sea Pictures. 6. Van der Vaart, Landscape and Figures. 7. Van Zoon, Two Flower Pieces. 8. Berghem, Four Landscapes and Figures. 9. Antonio Pellegrini, Sketch of the Dome of St. Paul's. 10. Van der Meer, Portrait of the Earl of Shaftesbury. 11. Amiconi, Coriolanus. Other artists : Van Diest, Jacques Carrey, Segers and Bogdani (Flowers and Fruits), and Isaac Gosset, modeller in wax, who is represented by eleven small figures from the Antique, and twenty-four heads of painters, poets, and philosophers. There is a ceiling design by Imperiali (Francesco Ferdinandi) ; a Landscape with Figures by " Horizonti " (Jan Frans van Bloemen, called Orizonti or Orizonte) ; and a landscape by " Mille " may have been by ^ Both Francesco Solimene and Francesco Trevisani are represented at Goodwood, the first by two episodes in the Hfe of Alexander the Great, and the other by two Heads of the Madonna. JOHN WOOTTON, i678(?)-i765 103 Francisque Millet, who died in 1679, ^^ ^y Jan Meel or Miel, a painter from Antwerp who died at Turin in 1664. Has this collection any unity ? Omit Wootton's pictures, and who would guess that it came from his home in Cavendish Square ? IV In his time the value of engraving as an advertisement for artists was recognised almost everywhere in Europe. Did it appeal to Wootton, and was he courted by printsellers and publishers ? Publishers came to him once, and a good many small designs were engraved for the first part of the first edition of Gay's Fables. As a whole they are much inferior to Barlow's illustrative prints. Wootton liked ample space, and a small page, five inches by eight, cramped him greatly. Still, his wee designs cannot be passed over by students of his lifework. In one print he can be compared with Stubbs. It is No. 37, The Farmer's Wife and the Raven. Stubbs painted this subject in enamel, did not repeat it in oil-colour, and sold the work to a Mrs. Armstead for a hundred guineas after he had engraved it himself on a plate 27 in. by 24 in.^ The farmer's wife rides on a poor blind white horse, which is startled by a croaking raven perched on an oak. The horse stumbles, and begins to fall, upsetting the good wife gradually, with her basket of eggs. In Wootton she has had her fall, a mild one, for she turns and looks up at the raven, while her sugarloaf hat spins on its point. As regards the really important engraved work after Wootton, it produced only a few prints, not enough to be concordant with his fame, which lasted through a century. For a long time it surprised me that the most gifted sporting artist of three Georgian reigns — Stubbs was productive in two, not three — did little by his influence, as a painter and as a man, to benefit engravers and their art. In 1726, as George Vertue relates, Wootton engaged Baron to engrave four of his hunting pieces, paying £50 for each plate. This was a large sum when considered in its relation to its purchasing value and also to the prices received by Wootton for large hunting pictures, 83 in. by 116 in., like two at Welbeck Abbey, which cost ^£107 10^. the pair. I learn, too, from Mr. Goulding, that in 1720 Lord Harley paid Baron for three plates at the rate of ten guineas each, surely not enough. Is Vertue's note on the payment to 1 May, 1788. The engraving was published from Stubbs' house, 24 Somerset Street, Portman Square. I04 BRITISH SPORTING ARTISTS Baron well founded ? I believe so, A noted engraver himself, and knowing that the art he loved was usually underpaid, he would be struck by prices received by fellow-craftsmen. Wootton, then, was a generous paymaster, an artist in his dealings with Baron, and thus very different from the printsellers and publishers, who were Shylocks when they bought or commissioned books and engraved plates. William Upcott, whom we shall meet again in the chapter on Stubbs, collected a great many invaluable documents on eighteenth-century publishing, and everyone can learn from his research that publishers had not even grasped the fact that, always and inevitably, the principal capital in pubUshing is not money but work done as well as possible by artists and authors. Anyone's money can reprint Shakespeare, for example, while Shakespeare himself is a miracle from heaven, and his capital will endure with mankind and remain unchanged. As Wootton understood these elementary things, he wished to free Baron from financial stress and strain while the four plates were being engraved. That his venture was a serious risk to his own finance is hinted plainly by George Vertue, who says that Wootton, " being well-beloved," a man of " pleasant and engaging behaviour," sought and obtained " a generous subscription from a great number of nobles and gentlemen," among whom Sir Robert Walpole was particularly active. Though he sold the prints at a good price, Wootton never again endeavoured to improve his reputation by means of engraving. How can this fact be explained ? Did he find that the prints were bought by his own patrons only ? If they had been really popular, even the publisher of 1726 should have regarded Wootton as a safe investment for their timidity. No such thing happened. Wootton was dead when P. C. Canot, in 1770, commemorated his election as A.R.A. by engraving a set of seven hunting pieces as a tribute to Wootton's memory and genius. These prints have retained their value ; they are collected, and look well in simple frames. But we learn from them to like Canot, not to live in close touch with Wootton ; because they give only a shadow of Wootton's art, or what Mr. H. G. Wells would call an outline. One is not surprised. Our painter has qualities which cannot well be translated into engraving. It would take a long time, and great skill, to give a true impression of his big compositions. There are painters who need photography and photographic processes of reproduction, such as photo- gravure ; and if these good things had been discovered in the fifteenth century we should know much more than we do about old masters. A great many noble pictures have altered so much in colour, and have suffered so much from neglect and " restorations," that we have no idea what they were Hke during ■5 ^' O tt. E -J O •*; e ?S-« ■♦J i- ro -5 to £ kS "II Q) J R sil LLJ ^ •' Hi 1^ -■ ^1 D K Q. "J UJ -J o-« CC I'- < I >-1 CC < UJ > V CO -ft I! H 5 o :' z 5 O s £ = ■? < 5 ' ^': o^^'; TJ^ 5 ^ E^ ^ t^ DQ, c ■§• w2 i- 1- O^ "k -^, X ;; :: ■^ SI1V ^'"'■^■; i-"?,v -. OS z| I 0-5-S < 0) ^ [■I- ^ •^ 1— ^* ox a ZCON — 00 a Z<0 V It- -S 10:5 l-z:| LU ^ .^ ccot LU >.•- x^ = >£ ■: JOHN WOOTTON, i678(?)-i765 113 and it cost £26 55. This horse was sent from Aleppo by Nathaniel Harley in 171 5. In his letter on the subject of its transmission, Nathaniel Harley tells his brother (Auditor Edward Harley) what difficulties he has had in getting the horse to the coast. The passes of the mountains between Aleppo and Scanderoon were watched, and the marine was strictly guarded in order to prevent its shipment. He says that he believes that " few such horses have ever come to England," and he continues : " I've had so much trouble, expense and difficulty at first to procure, afterwards to keep, and now to send him away, that I think him above any price that can be offered, and am so little of a merchant that I would not have him sold even tho' a thousand pounds should be bid for him." On the 4th December, 1716, Edward Lord Harley, writing to his uncle Nathaniel, says that this Dun Horse " is thought by all that have seen him to be the finest horse that ever came over." In December 1720, a Mr. Rollinson had a great desire to have a copy of the picture, but would not have the copy made without Lord Harley's leave. If leave is granted " Mr. Wootton will set about it." The sixth picture on the undated bill is No. 289, The Watering Place at Newmarket, 38 in. by 61 in., ^is^ 15^. This represents a landscape with many horsemen watering their horses at wooden troughs. ^ Seventeen of the Welbeck examples of Wootton have now been mentioned. The remaining four are : No. 273 A landscape with rivulet and figures ; No. 275 A Wolf; No. 425 A View of Castle Hill, Devonshire; and No. 485 A Spaniel called Casey, with two pictures in the background, one of a vase of flowers, and the other of two dogs, Mina and Die. Twelve of Wootton's pictures were included in the Sale of Lord Oxford's pictures in March 1742. The seven not already mentioned in this account are a Holy Family, a view of Newmarket Course, and five landscapes. Two others were sold when the Portland Museum was dispersed in 1786, namely No. 2927 described as " A pleasing landscape and figures," and No. 2928 " An upright view of a seaport with horses, figures, etc." The former realised 3(^5 55., and the latter ^6 12s. 6d. ^ The shape of this picture is rather similar to Tillemans' favourite canvases ; and it reminds us that Tillemans also painted The Watering Place at Newmarket, with a view of the course and a string of horses belonging to the Duke of Devonshire. The print after this picture in the British Museum measures 17J in. by iif in. ; J. Thompson delin. et sculp. Ten horses have been brought through a gap in the long ridge or bank ; and, beyond the bank, seven others are seen at exercise. As for Wootton's Starting Post at Newmarket, 37 in. by 58 in., here again he and Tillemans are in competition, since Tillemans painted a view of the Round Course with jockeys and horses preparing to start for a race at Newmarket, the King's Plate. A print after this picture in the British Museum is i64 in. by iij in.— W. S. S. I CHAPTER V GEORGE STUBBS AND HIS INFLUENCE Would that a great deal more had been written about Stubbs during his Hfetime ! No biographer tried to compose a whole-length portrait of him, though he was amazing, not as a man but as a group of uncommon men. A talk between Stubbs and Dr. Johnson would have sounded like a sham fight conducted by two downright believers in frontal attacks ; and as a gentleman in art, English through and through, we can place this painter side by side with a great novelist, the genial and candid Henry Fielding. Physically, Stubbs was as powerful as Alexander Dumas' father, whose feats of strength seem mythical. It is said of Stubbs that he carried the carcass of a horse unaided up two flights of stairs to his dissecting-room; and Dumas' father, so gossips believed, lifted up a horse between his legs, while clutching a rafter with his hands. Ordinary men grow myths out of all extraordinary men. It is enough to regard Stubbs as a giant, a Porthos in the history of art. Many dead horses were carried into his dissecting-room; there is no doubt at all on this point; and we may be certain also that the carrying was done mainly by himself, as he disliked and scorned helpers, whether paid or voluntary. Self-dependence was as natural to him as it is to birds and wild beasts. It wasted a good deal of his time and energy, as we shall see, but, usually, it suited the man's own methods as a careful innovator. Stubbs was rarely a borrower, and, though he worked radical changes in both science and art, he never paused to talk about his newness. Only one Englishman of the eighteenth century had a genius at all akin to his; it was Erasmus Darwin, born in 1731, a physiologist awJa poet. If Stubbs had been born at the beginning of the nineteenth century, like Charles Darwin, and Richard Owen, and Thomas Henry Huxley, art might well have been his hobby, and science his profession. His work in anatomical research has been invaluable to artists; and he was very keen as a naturalist, and also original. 114 GEORGE STUBBS AND HIS INFLUENCE 115 At the age of eighty-two his mind was occupied still with science,^ and Stubbs enjoyed his work so much that he did not feel busy enough. Excessively long walks amused him, and at last he took one too many : his great heart rebelled, and stopped all at once, like a tired hunter at a high fence. I should have wished to be this big man's Boswell ! At the close of his long life he met and liked a very clever young fellow named William Upcott, who had a passion for collecting and research, and who would win fame by discovering John Evelyn's Diary, and the Con- fidential Despatches of Dayrolles, and a great many other historical documents, including the Clarendon Correspondence. Upcott was an Oxfordshire man, born in 1779. At the age of seventeen he was apprenticed to a bookseller in Pall Mall, and about twelve years later, in 1808, he became sub-librarian under Professor Porson at the London Institu- tion, where he remained till 1834. As old Stubbs died in 1806, it is easy to put a date on his intimacy with Upcott. Three numbers of his new book had been published by 1806, and the fourth, fifth and sixth were nearly ready for the press; so that Stubbs had need of booksellers. On August 24th, 1803, Upcott called to see Stubbs with Samuel Daniell, brother of William Daniell, R.A. " We found him engaged," writes Upcott, " in engraving his series of anatomical plates, of which he had just completed his first number. This day he will have attained his seventy-ninth year, and still enjoys so much strength and health that he says, within the last month, having missed the stage, he has walked two or three times from his own house in Somerset Street to the Earl of Clarendon's at the Grove, between Watford and Tring, a distance of sixteen miles, carrying a small portmanteau in his hand." And Ozias Humphrey, R.A., who was Upcott 's godfather, speaks of the same feat, and says that it was performed before ten in the morning ! Only the day before his death he walked eight or nine miles, and no reaction began till 3 a.m. on the following day, July loth, when he awoke and sat up in bed. Then a dreadful pain seized his chest. Yet he dressed himself and went downstairs; caused no alarm to his household, but died silently and alone at nine o'clock, seated in his arm-chair, with his gown wrapped around him. But for Upcott we should know very little about George Stubbs. He began to make notes from the old man's autobiographical talk, and his manuscript found its way somehow to the library of Mr. Joseph Mayer, F.S.A., of ^ Comparative Anatomical Exposition of the Structure of the Human Body, with that of a Tiger and a Common Fowl, in Thirty Tables. ii6 BRITISH SPORTING ARTISTS Bebington, who happened to be a great admirer of Stubbs at a time when Victorians were passing into that Esthetic Period which W. S. Gilbert ridiculed in Patience. It was almost a crime then to make any reference to an eighteenth-century sporting artist. Stubbs had suffered such a complete eclipse that even historians of art either omitted him from their books, like Louis Fagan in his official Handbook to the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum} or made misstatements about him, like Redgrave in A Century of Painters. Redgrave confessed that " little is known of Stubbs' early life, or even whether his original bent was to the arts." Joseph Mayer was annoyed by this ignorance, and also by the fact that even when Stubbs was remembered the variety of his work was never known. A person here and there would say, " What ? Stubbs ? Ah, yes, of course, a man who painted racehorses ! " Sir Joshua Reynolds' great admiration for Stubbs was forgotten. It was into Sir Joshua's house in Leicester Square that Stubbs drove the chariot of the sun across the heavens with Phaeton. No painter of his time was more various than he, and only two or three had a diversity of appeal equal to his. True genius never cultivates only a few fields or a single province; it forms colonies and binds them into a kingdom. Stubbs was the only painter of his day who composed some pictures of harvest- ing without being either too idyllic or prettily sentimental; and his whole attitude to country life was manly, sincere, and English, whether his chosen motif was a bull-baiting, or some gamekeepers, or two horses fighting, or a set of shooting episodes with ample landscapes always ennobled by fine trees. Or consider side by side a masterpiece of equestrian portraiture and one of his finer studies of big game, tigers and lions. In these completely opposed phases of art Stubbs at his best had no rival among Englishmen of his period. No one else could have painted his William Bentinck Third Duke of Portland, illustrated here; and though his lions and tigers invite criticism when their painter tries to represent what he has not seen, has not studied from nature, his big game studies from life are very good, and good sometimes as dramatic realism. The best were engraved. Lucky is the collector who has a rich impression of John Dixon's mezzotint after the Tigress lying below some rocks ! She has just washed her face and ruffled the moist hair a little. A wonderful elastic grace and power is expressed in her lazy body. She takes her ease luxuriously, a queen among carnivorous and shrewish beasts. I have no wish to see the original picture, for it may have changed colour. There are two ^ Published in the autumn of 1876. ._ o ■^' -^ q'.eM < O -D -C5 5 r, CO H)'^ (0 "^ GEORGE STUBBS AND HIS INFLUENCE 117 mezzotints of it, both fine, but the later one by John Murphy, dated July 27th, 1798, is rather less desirable.^ Joseph Mayer, in his final remarks on Stubbs as a great student of animals, raises points which are very useful as a preface to the artist's methods and biography. Let me sum them up as follows : — 1. "To admit that Stubbs' paintings mostly disappoint the crowd is no disparagement of the artist. Quite the contrary; for he who knows what manner of beast was given Englishmen to admire before Stubbs' day, best recognises what we owe him. His obstinacy in rejecting the models of other men, saved him from falling into the exaggerations of any school. Because his horses and his [other] animals are correctly drawn, because they have that expression, and no other, belonging to their kind, the unthinking pass them with a glance, and call them commonplace. . . . Stubbs was the first to paint animals as they are. No temptation led him to invent a muscle, nor did he put his creatures into an attitude.'^ They are always as Nature made, with their own shapes, gestures and expressions — often ugly, but always true. This old-world painter would have refused to illustrate a human feeling, a drama of human interest, in pictures of animal nature. He painted what he saw, and never showed an immortal soul in a poodle's eye." True, Stubbs and his naturalism had been displaced for a time by Landseer's pretty and romantic sentiment ; but Landseer himself valued Stubbs, bought his drawings, and consulted them as guides. As a naturalist Stubbs had no patience with anything at all far-sought and dear-bought ; and the best aesthetic truth being tranquil, never fussy or noisy, as facts are often, he seldom let himself go. Dean Swift's clear and lucid prose and a fine picture by Stubbs have a similar reserve and vigour; only the painter's mind is never a rebel against God and mankind, like Swift's in morbid hours. Reactions from Puritan rigour had varying effects, usually bad. Stubbs reacted, but his art shows no bad results. It has no sentimentality, no coarseness, not even in his picture of a thoroughbred stallion trying to attract a mare, though this subject would not be chosen to-day, and no melodramatic violence. Had Stubbs enough poetical or imaginative feeling ? Joseph Mayer tried to answer this question : — 2. " Declining ... to dramatise his beasts, or even to idealise them over- much, of necessity he circumscribed his sphere of art, according to modern 1 The Dixon mezzotint is dated February 1st, 1773. But the big-game period began ten years earlier, when " The Horse and Lion " was exhibited at the Society of Artists, a predecessor of the Royal Academy. 2 Mayer means a false attitude, not one that comes naturally from a given emotion as in Stubbs' picture of Bulls Fighting, mezzotinted by G. T. Stubbs. ii8 BRITISH SPORTING ARTISTS notions. Of each expression properly belonging to an animal — and coming in the range of his experience — he was master ; but he created none, nor con- ceived what he had not beheld. . . . His animals have no appropriate scenery of their own. ..." In Mayer's view Stubbs was a realist without enough dramatic power. " He knew the attitude and cruel eye of a Hon crouching for the spring "; knew each vein that swells, each muscle that relaxes or distends, when a horse meets a lion, and is struck motionless with quivering fear. " But he did not know how lion meets tiger across a prey, having no advantage over Snyders in such work, saving correctness of anatomy. For which reason his pictures of the kind are less satisfactory, wanting as he did the great Dutchman's imagination ..." Is this a fair estimate ? Does it come from a man who understood art as an artist ? In the first place, to strike a comparison between Stubbs and Snyders is useful for one reason only, and this reason Joseph Mayer did not see. Snyders learnt in youth how to paint confidently and powerfully, while Stubbs was entirely self-taught, his command of the brush being a record of what he gained slowly from Nature by unguided practice and observation. Every bit of his enterprise — in drawing, painting, etching, engraving, enamel, anatomy, and his work as a naturalist — was a conquest. Inevitably, then, he valued most highly those things which aided him incessantly — exact observation, cool and serene judgment, and a searching thoroughness. A giant in physical strength, he drew and etched with a minute precision that will take you by surprise whenever you see its delicate truthfulness. The Print Room in the British Museum has one of his anatomical drawings of a horse, done with a very fine brush. Its technique says as plainly as words would say : " An error in this work will be as bad as a lie, and unpardonable." A training of this order had lasting effects on the artist's attitude towards his profession. Snyders felt and enjoyed technical inspiration; he painted so easily that colours and brushes were to him what words and phrases are to a born orator. They carried him away from himself, sometimes too far ! From Stubbs, on the other hand, we must not expect impulsive technique, an emotional handling, since his best qualities are quiet and concentrated earnestness and realness, with a well-bred manliness. These are the quahties which Mr. Munnings loves in George Stubbs. In order to see a typical Stubbs, with its honesty, concentration, good breed- ing, and virile reticence, study his portrait of The Third Duke of Portland, reproduced in this book. This picture was painted and signed in his forty- ^ m L^ GEORGE STUBBS AND HIS INFLUENCE 119 third year, 1767, twelve months after his Anatomy of the Horse was pubUshed by subscription. Stubbs desired to make himself known, and, as he admitted candidly to William Upcott, publishing a book of his own etchings from his anatomical studies seemed the best means of introducing himself to London. " More than anything else," he added, " the book tended to throw me into horse painting, and to this I ascribe entirely my being a horse painter." Artists rarely judge themselves correctly, and that Stubbs could paint dogs as well as he painted horses, and could place a gentleman in the saddle as a good rider, all this we find illustrated by his portrait of the Third Duke of Portland. Those dogs on our left are fully and frankly natural, like the grey horse. How simply and powerfully they are modelled ! They have muscles under their coats and bones under their muscles. Look, too, at the back- ground. Is there not something almost photographic in this representation of architecture ? The house was there, behind his sitters, and Stubbs, who knew no more about architecture than I do about Chinese, felt bound by honour to portray it faithfully. A master of perspective would find some faults with his weighty precision, but the general effect of detailed mass and strength do what Stubbs desired. And I believe that he is more sportsmanly in pictures of this difficult sort than in those which caused him to be called a painter of racehorses. He defies convention deliberately, breaking the old stock rule of composition that ordered him never to place principal figures in the middle of a picture. With his grey horse, and the pinacled fountain behind, Stubbs divides his canvas into halves, and then proves that a discord employed with skill is right in painting as in musical composition. Another portrait composition at Welbeck Abbey is equally notable as an introduction to this painter's tranquil and yet virile reaUsm. It has in its background his passion for trees; portrays the same Duke and his brother, Lord Edward Bentinck; and belongs to about the same date, apparently. The timber leaping-bar resembles the one used to-day. One hunter is a weight- carrier, while the other is a small horse, a boy's hunter, perhaps, and in the act of being taught to jump. Lord Crewe, at Epsom, has two hunting portraits by Stubbs, one a very typical picture, and the other with qualities that are new to me. There are two hunters in the typical picture, and one of them is ridden by John Crewe, M.P. for Stafford and for Cheshire, who was created Lord Crewe in 1806, and who died in 1855 at the age of ninety-three. The other picture is a portrait of a short-lived man, Richard Slater Milnes (1759-1804), M.P. for York, riding I20 BRITISH SPORTING ARTISTS a black horse, and dressed in the Raby colours, a red coat with a black collar. He rides uneasily and very high, his body has no substance, and his outstretched hand is too small. A landscape background with hounds in the distance, right, but too conspicuously shown. It is a picture with mixed technical qualities; its background, very sketchily rubbed in, seems to be by another hand; and the black hunter is silhouetted. Did Stubbs himself paint Milnesi whose complexion and expression have a translucency that looks like a fore- warning of phthisis .'' If so, he was influenced by Gainsborough, and as a rule he preferred frank collaboration to the act of taking hints from other painters whose work he admired. Sometimes he and Amos Green worked together, but not by any means so often as some persons have believed ; and sometimes the owner of a thoroughbred wished another part of the picture to be painted by someone else. For instance, here is a story told by Stubbs to William Upcott, and retold by Joseph Mayer : — " For the Marquis of Rockingham, at Wentworth House, Stubbs painted a life-size portrait of Whistlejacket, a yellow-sorrel horse with white mane and tail. The Marquis had intended to employ some eminent painter of portraits to add a likeness of King George the Third sitting on Whistle- jacket's back, and some landscape painter of equal excellence to execute the background. He designed, in fact, to have a pendant to the picture by Morier ^ and others hanging in the great hall at Wentworth House. This idea, however, was abandoned under circumstances very flattering to the artist. Whistle- jacket had a temper so savage that only one man could be trusted to take him to and from his stable. The last sitting proved to be shorter than Stubbs had expected, and his work was finished before the time fixed for this man to come as usual, and lead the horse away. Whilst the boy in charge of him waited, Stubbs put his work in a good light and observed its effect, as artists do. The boy, who was leading Whistlejacket up and down, called out suddenly, and, turning, Stubbs saw the horse staring at his own portrait and quivering with rage. He sprang forward to attack it, rearing, and lifting the boy off his legs. Very hard work they had to preserve the picture. When the Marquis heard this story it pleased him so much that he would not allow a single touch to be added, but framed and hung the painting without a background. For the ^ David Morier, a Swiss painter of horses, dogs, battlepieces, and royal equestrian portraits, who lived from 1704 to 1770, and whose skill at one time was greatly valued by the British Court. At Cumberland House, near Windsor, he can be studied in representative work. He came to England in 1743, and received a pension of £200 a year from the Dettingen Duke of Cumberland, which v/ent on till the Duke died in 1765. Four years later Morier was imprisoned in the Fleet for debt, and he died so poor that he was buried by the Incorporated Society of Artists. RICHARD SLATER MILN E3 it CD s Om "? coCQ ^ ^D o EH" a-l > J" a ^ Z uO) < OCD LU93 tr iH < SOT Q O O "'o: O gO cc ouJ OD io GEORGE STUBBS AND HIS INFLUENCE 137 conduct in the members of the Academy, added to the original reluctance with which he suffered his name to be entered among the candidates, determined him with an unconquerable resolution not to send a picture to be deposited in the schools, and more especially not to comply with a law made the following year, obliging every candidate elected to present the Academy with an example of his skill to be their property for ever. Mr. Stubbs always averred that he considered this law unjust, and thought he had reason to suppose it levelled particularly against himself. He regarded it, moreover, as an ex post facto law, calculated to punish an offence committed before the making of the law. Mr. Stubbs, on this account, would never allow that he was less than an Academician elect, waiting only the royal signature ; and he was satisfied also to continue in that state." Stubbs forgot, and this point is important, that he could not quarrel with the R.A. without being rude towards the King, who was outside the whole disturbance, and friendly towards him. He might have made an appeal to the King, who followed the fortunes of his Academy with affection and judg- ment. But men of uncommon vigour, when they swell out a grievance with hot self-pity, are like the wind, their anger blowing " where it listeth." Stubbs lost dignity; and I dare say he chuckled when the Royal Academy, the year before his death, placed him in a printed list among the Academicians, as though tired of a long dispute. Hitherto he had been catalogued as A.R.A.^ — a challenge that kept his temper too indiscreet. IV Stubbs had many patrons, the most notable being the King, the Prince of Wales, Lord Grosvenor at Eaton Hall, the Duke of Richmond at Goodwood, Viscount Torrington at Southill, the Marquis of Rockingham at Wentworth House, Earl Fitzwilliam, the Duke of Newcastle, Earl Spencer, the Nelthorpe family. Lord Gormanston, Sir Henry Vane Tempest, Colonel Thornton, and others, including Erasmus Darwin and Wedgwood. When Gustav Waagen, the famous German art critic, made his pilgrimage through England's private galleries, collecting notes for his book, he paid little attention to sporting pictures ; but at Althorp in the great hall he was impressed by two pictures by Stubbs, preferring them greatly to much larger canvases by Wootton. His note runs : " The hall is decorated with very large hunting- pieces, and portraits of horses, most of them the size of life, of which, however, only two small pieces by Stubbs, in point of animated conception and refined understanding of all the parts, can be placed in the ranks of real works of art." 138 BRITISH SPORTING ARTISTS The two small pieces are portraits of hunters, Romulus and Scapeflood, belonging to John, First Earl Spencer, and painted in 1777. Visitors compare them with hunters by John Wootton : Brisk, Squirrel, Craftsman, and Sore Heels. Though Waagen is pedantic and narrow towards Wootton, it is certain that sporting pictures are generally weakened by a vast spread of canvas. Stubbs was harmed several times by commissions for pictures that were too large for ordinary big rooms, and also for its appeal as decorative art ; but Wootton was handicapped more frequently .^ Still, we are studying an evolution, and must not complain over its earlier phases and fashions. At Eaton Hall the pictures by Stubbs include the racehorses Mambrino and Sweet William, " Mares and Foals " under massive oak trees, and a stag- hunting picture, with portraits in it, painted in 1760, and very notable as a spacious work full of observed movement. The " Mares and Foals " has been illustrated a good many times; it is a fine thing, with quiet and truthful modelling, a point worth noting as the painter was then obsessed by his anatomy studies and might easily have become too " mappy." Mrs. Leopold de Rothschild owns a very good Stubbs which may be set side by side with " Mares and Foals," for it comes from a similar mood of technical inspiration. Nothing is overdone, and the five horses are composed with decorative care and tact into a sort of tranquil frieze. The sky is filmed with warm clouds that give to a very reposeful composition a luminous back- ground. A stretch of shadow across the nearest part of the foreground has darkened, but no harm has been done by this chemical change of colour; indeed, it helps to concentrate one's attention on the frieze. A fine old tree grows in the middle distance, well placed, dividing the design unequally into two parts; and under this tree as a central interest is a white horse, whose head is in correct relation with the light warm sky. To right of this white beauty is a dark brown one that turns her head with some ill-humour to nose a much bigger companion whose body silhouettes not too sharply against a tree-fringed lake and the sky. On the other side of the white horse are two fillies. The nearer one, a pale chestnut, is in the act of grazing, while the other has raised her head — in a delicate and winsome movement — to nibble some leaves ; she may be called, perhaps, a very delicate and subtle iron-grey. Who can put correct names on the varying tints that the play of light out of doors gives to the coats of horses ? In this picture the harmony of contrastive coats is impossible to describe, 1 To keep vast pictures dusted is extremely difficult, particularly in private houses. Some of the Woottons are filthy. GEORGE STUBBS AND HIS INFLUENCE 139 for the white is not white, and the pale chestnut is something else also, like the iron-grey toned with purple. Mr. Munnings has placed this painting among his favourite works by Stubbs, like the big hunting piece at Eaton. Hunting pictures by George Stubbs are uncommon. At Goodwood, where he remained nine months, he painted one for the Duke of Richmond, and also two more very notable pictures. These three pictures are : — 1. The Third Duke of Richmond, with his brother. Lord George Lennox, and General Jones, riding. The Duke, on a dark-brown hunter, is in the centre of the picture, and Lord George advances towards him on a bay, left; while General Jones, on their right, jumps his grey hunter over a gate. Between the General and the Duke is a hunt servant on a black horse, dressed in yellow and scarlet livery, and a hunting horn around his body. With the right hand he touches his cap. A gentleman on a chestnut canters towards the group; and in the foreground, ready to mount a grey, a huntsman in yellow and scarlet stands among his hounds, which are accompanied by a terrier. As for the background, it is lively with mounted sportsmen and with hounds apparently running. 6 ft. 8 in. by 4 ft. 6 in. 2. Racehorses training, with portraits of the Third Duke of Richmond, Mary his Duchess, and Lady Louisa Lennox, all riding. " The Duke and Duchess on grey horses are in the centre of the picture ; Lady Louisa Lennox on a chestnut; close to them on the Duchess's left, and following them, a mounted groom in yellow and scarlet livery. The two ladies wear dark-blue habits with gold buttons, the waistcoats of a lighter blue, and the skirts so short as to show the foot ; blue velvet hunting caps ; the Duke is also dressed in dark blue, with gold buttons and a three-cornered hat. He is pointing to three racehorses, a grey, a chestnut, and a bay, which are being galloped with clothing on; boys riding them, wearing the yellow and scarlet livery and hunting caps. On the left of the riders, standing at a stable-door, is another racehorse, being groomed by three men in undress liveries, and a boy, in yellow and scarlet, is bringing an armful of straw. In the distance, behind, on their right, is the spire of Chichester Cathedral. A good many dogs of different kinds are about in the foreground of the picture." ^ 6 ft. 8 in. by 4 ft. 6 in. 3. Lord Holland and Lord Albemarle, Shooting at Goodwood. The same size, and animated in composition. These pictures by Stubbs are Httle known. Racing and shooting were his favourite sports, apparently; and note, in this connection, that his largest 1 From a private catalogue composed in 1879 by Amy Countess of March. I40 BRITISH SPORTING ARTISTS picture — a canvas 13 ft. 7 in. by 8 ft. 2 in. — ^was a racing piece owned by Lord Fitzwilliam, and exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1800, the painter's 76th year. It represented the defeat of Diamond by Hambletonian. At the age of sixty-six George Stubbs accepted from The Turf Revtezv a racing commission out of which he hoped to earn much money. He related to Upcott the story of this big scheme, and Mayer summed it up as follows : — " It was proposed to him to paint a series of pictures, portraits of celebrated racers, from The Godolphin Arabian to the most famous horses of his own day.i The pictures were to be exhibited first, then engraved, and finally published in numbers, with a letterpress which should contain, besides a history of the Turf, the races and matches of each horse depicted, a description of it, and anecdotes. The sum offered for his commission was ^9000, deposited in a bank, whence the artist could draw it as his work progressed. It appears that Stubbs completed a great part of his engagement, but the outbreak of war ruined the enterprise. Sixteen pictures were painted, exhibited, and engraved; fourteen, if not all, in duplicate, large ones for framing, and small to accompany the letterpress. Thirteen of the latter were engraved. After Stubbs' death, his executrix. Miss Spencer, before mentioned, kept possession of them. They were disposed of at the sale of his pictures." ^ Now it has happened that these racehorses, and others, are the only impor- tant works of the artist's varied output which have remained well known; and though they set an example that greatly improved the art of horse painting, yet their active infiuence caused a reaction among painters and critics who feared and disliked the competition of their popularity against other phases of art, which were summed up as " historical." It was regarded as ridiculous that Stubbs, " a mere painter of racehorses," as he was miscalled, should be allowed after his death to draw attention away from the sacred thing named " the Great School," which tried to be biblical, mythological, allegorical, and historic, with magical help from a very imperfect knowledge of ancient customs, cos- tumes, and other essentials. To-day it is very hard to understand this craze, but it is amusingly illustrated by a good story. Constable used to relate how he " was made to smart " after his election as R.A. in 1829, his fifty-third year. An insult came to him from the P.R.A., Sir Thomas Lawrence, who told him that he was " peculiarly fortunate " to be honoured " at a time when there were historical painters of great merit on the list of candidates." Well, those painters of great merit are exploded reputations, while Constable remains ^ The year 1790, that is to say. 2 The exhibition was held at the Turf Gallery in Conduit Street, 1794. Among the horses were Eclipse, Pumpkin, An\-il, Gimcrack, Baronet, Mambrino, Protector, and Shark. ^iwm«>^«i<««i|pn«if«f!«^inp^MPP| THE SPANISH POINTER. By GEORGE STUBBS. Engraved by SCOTT, Reprt^duced i-y permission of Canvas 24 28 ins. DUNGANNON AND HIS LAMB. The initials on the lamb are those of Denis O'Kelly first ow/ner of Eclipse Reproduced from an old Print after GEORGE STUEBS. GEORGE STUBBS AND HIS INFLUENCE 141 as art and also as English history. Stubbs, too, remains, but not yet as a master of variety, a herald who drew inspiration from different aspects of England's country life. Even the Sports Exhibition of 189 1 proved that its directors did not under- stand sporting artists; they disconnected sport from other great phases of historical country life. Though fifteen pictures of Stubbs were chosen, no attempt was made to represent what he valued most of all — diversity, a wide range of appeal. His Gamekeepers,^ in the noble mezzotint by Henry Birche, a name used by Richard Earlom, belongs to sport as intimately as one of his racehorses ; his tigress reminds us of big-game shooting ; and if anyone had told him that his charming harvest scenes were unsportsmanlike, he would have answered with Johnsonian vigour that sportsmen who didn't like hay- making and reapers had no right to keep horses. The Sports Exhibition hung eight racehorses by Stubbs : Molly Long Legs, a bay filly by Babraham out of a fox-hunter mare, bred in 1753 : 2 Shark (1771-1796), with his trainer Price, painted in 1775; Eclipse, the sire of 334 winners, a chestnut horse with one white hind leg, foaled while the eclipse of April ist, 1764, was taking place; the grey Mambrino,^ painted in 1779, foaled in 1768, by Engineer out of a Cade mare; Brood Mares and Foals, from the Westminster Collection at Eaton Hall ; Jupiter, a chestnut son of Eclipse, dated 1789 ; and two portraits of the Godolphin Arabian, a brown stallion about 15 hands high, who lived from 1724 to 1753. Now it is plain that eight pictures of racehorses among a selection of fifteen works are too many. Stubbs, with good reason, valued his shooting pictures, and the Sports Exhibition chose only one, dated 1772, and representing Sir John Nelthorpe with a brace of favourite pointers. Tinker and Hector. Again, as a painter of dogs George Stubbs was unrivalled for several genera- tions, and in two qualities — construction and weight — he is still unmatched by English artists. Yet the Sports Exhibition failed to do justice to these facts. One portrait of a dog was chosen, a spaniel, painted in 1778, and inferior to the picture known as a " Spanish Pointer." * Still, the arbitrary ^ Stubbs told Upcott that " The Gamekeepers," Hke his picture of " The Bricklayers," was painted at Lord Torrington's. He used enamel on copper. 2 Molly is held by a jockey who wears a black cap and a blue jacket; landscape, with water; saddle and clothes on the ground, right. ^ Painted in 1779. Mambrino was the sire of Messenger, and Messenger, who was exported to the United States at the close of the eighteenth century, became very famous. From his blood all the finest American trotting horses are descended. * There is an engraving of this work by Scott, 1801. Stubbs himself engraved and pubhshed, in 1788, his picture of " Two Setters." 142 BRITISH SPORTING ARTISTS directors did well to choose " The Grosvenor Hunt," painted in 1762, and two fine pictures from the Duke of Portland's collection. It is interesting to note that Sir Theodore Cook, in his great history of The English Turf, illustrates twelve of Stubbs' horse pictures, choosing Brood Mares and Foals, Mambrino, Prospero by Merlin, from Lord Rosebery's collection, Marske by Squirt, Protector, Dungannon and the Lamb, Anvil by Herod, Eclipse, 1764, Hambletonian, and three pictures from Cumberland Lodge, near Windsor .^ V In my notes on Cumberland Lodge there are fourteen canvases by Stubbs. Some have lost much of their original freshness. Under the late Prince Christian every picture in this house of old sport in old art was treasured with a fine sportsman's aff'ection, but Tempus Edax devours imperceptibly, and the paintings were old when the Prince saw them for the first time. Oil paint, very often, changes early, as in the case of Turner; and when dust collects over it in a damp climate and professional " cleaning " is employed, woeful mischief may be done before a fine picture is fifty years old. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, and earlier, the preservation of oil-paintings received very little attention, and Stubbs was among the painters who ran the greatest risks, because he studied from Nature and often in high keys of colour. If a dark picture becomes a little darker no great harm may be done ; but when a light one depends on subtle contrasts and relations, the toning effects of time and change may be very disenchanting. No pictures of recent date have suffered more than those of the first French Impressionists, for example. ^ Several pieces by Stubbs at Cumberland Lodge have altered unharmfully, like the one of Grey Trentham, bred in 1788 out of a mare by Herod. One small work, 15 in. by 19 in., has a curious history. It represents a dark brown horse in profile, with a long tail ; and inscribed on the frame are four names : " Hollyhock." G. Stubbs, C. J. Vernet, F. Boucher. It is astonishing to see these three painters united. To find room for them on such a small surface was an achievement ; and how and when were they brought together ? Fran- 9ois Boucher died in 1770, and behind the picture are two paper labels giving 1 The Old Sporting Magazine illustrated thirteen pictures by Stubbs : Vol. 9, Otho ; Vol. 21, Colt bred by Lord Bolingbroke; Vol. 31, Ambrosio, a Stallion; Vol. 32, Horse and Lion ; Vol. 33, The Godolphin Arabian, also Dungannon ; Vol. 37, Baronet ; Vol. 56, Marske; Vol. 57, Mambrino; Vol. 60, Shark; Vol. 61, Eclipse; and Vol. 62, Gimcrack. 2 E.g. : the Impressionist pictures in the Luxembourg, Paris, which have altered astonishingly. GEORGE STUBBS AND HIS INFLUENCE 143 a story written in French. " Ce tableau a ete don7ie a M. Moret dans un dernier voyage en Angleterre dans I'anne'e 1766 par Lord Boolenbrock. Le cheval a ete peint par Stubbs actuellement a Londres, le fond du tableau par Vernet celebre peintre de maritie, et les deux figures et les moutons, par Boucher, premier peintre du roi de France." An incomplete story. Did Stubbs paint the horse on a bare canvas in order that M. Moret, on his return to Paris, might employ two very noted French artists ? And when did the picture return to England .'' Boucher's work, in the middle distance, represents two young girls with a dog tending sheep. Some other Stubbs pictures at Cumberland Lodge : — 1. A Buck and Doe in a Park, 40I in. by 50I in. 2. Equestrian portrait of a formalist, a dapper semi-courtier, Sir Sydney Meadows, in a prim green coat and a buff vest and breeches. A three-cornered hat rests austerely over a grey wig, and his grey horse, with a long showy tail, looks equally unfit for hard exercise. A landscape background in which are some high rocks. Dated 1778. 32! in. by 40 in. 3. Sir William Meadows in a riding house or school ; another grey wig, and another green coat, but grey stockings with white clocks, shoes with silver buckles, and a black hat. A bay charger. Dated 1791. 5o| in. by 40I in. 4. Portrait of Lady Ladd mounted on a restive chestnut horse. She wears a blue habit relieved by gilt buttons, a white shirt frill and necktie and a high black hat adorned with a rosette and an ostrich feather. The background is a landscape with trees and a pond. 40^ in. by 14I in. 5. Bay Horse in a paddock, and Gascon the groom carrying a sieve of corn. Large trees behind, and a stable in the middle distance. 40^ in. by 50I in. 6. Two chestnut saddle-horses belonging to the Prince of Wales, after- wards George IV. One of them is ridden by Anderson their groom, who is dressed in scarlet, and leads the other. 40! in. by 50^ in. Dated 1793.^ 7. Portrait of Mr. Sontag or Sontague, Page to the Prince of Wales, in a drab coat, buff breeches and vest, white stockings, shoes with silver buckles, black hat, low-crowned, walking with three dogs, a stick in his right hand. Landscape behind, with water and a wood. Dated 1782. 36 in. by 54J in. 8. The Prince of Wales' Phaston, with a pair of black horses harnessed. Thomas the State Coachman holds a horse by the bridle ; and a pet dog leaps 1 Note the dates. In 1793 Stubbs was sixty-nine. 144 BRITISH SPORTING ARTISTS up towards the other. A boy carries on his shoulder the phaeton's pole. 40 in. by 50-I in. 9. Portrait of the brown racehorse Pumpkin, with his jockey up, and a hill behind left. The jockey wears a blue and white striped cap and waistcoat, and leather breeches and boots. 32J in. by 39 in. These nine pictures, when their freshness had undergone no change at all, must have been greatly admired for their variety. Several would please their painter now if he could revisit them, while others would not. He would insist upon repainting them at his own cost, and in the manner of his best period. Ideal restoration ! Has it ever occurred to you that we could lose without regret some 94 per cent, of to-day's artists if the old dead masters could return for twenty years or so to rescue their best work from damaging time and change? Turner would be prodigiously active, Reynolds also; and Stubbs, I think, would have so much repainting to do that he might forget his unfinished book. Comparative Anatomical Exposition of the Structure of the Human Body, with that of a Tiger and a common Fowl, begun during the year 1795. Or, perhaps, fascinated by the researches of Darwin, and of many others, he might lose touch with art by talking all day long with naturalists and physiologists. 5^ o < o -I i^ p _l -^ m — I +J OS ids O w < ro c : g w .9 ^ Q "--■ , «) ■a 5 LU i -D 5 ■-" o c o 5 ;i 2 3 W 5 O "1 M 2 nj CO ^ s:<0 :: H CO— s. CO-* :c' CO LLl >- ^ UJ T u _„ tSUJ 4'Si' tfO ^E to QQ I m Q._l nsQ- LU c 5 Q S-5 m -i til Z ri < s 1-5.1 ^ I cn XOS LlO-S CHAPTER VI MORLAND, ROWLANDSON, AND IBBETSON I One curious fact in English biography is the moralising tittle-tattle set astir by Morland's misadventures with debt and with too much drink. He lived at a time when bibulous habits, inherited with gout, were as popular as tobacco is to-day. Yet it was regarded as very odd that he, a youngster of genius, merry and excitable, should follow a bad vogue, " choosing wine instead of water, and gin instead of tea." In 1785, at the age of twenty-two, he went to Margate, and wrote as follows to a friend : — " Last Monday week almost everybody in Margate was drunk, by reason of the Freemasons' meeting and fox-hunt, and all my male sitters disappointed me. Some sent me word they were engaged; some not very well; others could not get their hair dressed. But I found it was one general disorder. This was next morning. . . ." All classes alike drank hard, as if eager to outdo all that history and tradition had to say about earlier generations. A cargo of lemons arriving at a port was a great event, as toddy tippling with a complete flavour would break in upon the monotony of wine and cause a different sort of morning headache. Sir Walter Besant, after studying this period, said that crescendo drinking began about 1730, and that it went on with great spirit for a hundred years. If we say that a depraved thirst was often congenital, and always easy to acquire, we shall be correct. Morland acquired it with ease and pleasure, finding at first, after his Puritan upbringing at home, that wine and jolly com- panions went together everywhere. Handsome, merry and clever, he was full of his fun, but, unlike Sir Walter Scott when revelling in Liddesdale, he could not say " I am making myself all the time." Though his case should have been easy to understand, fellow-artists belaboured him ungrudgingly because he sought a gradual suicide in tipsiness; and no fewer than four gossipy books were pubHshed on his life shortly after his death. Four books in three years ! L r45 146 BRITISH SPORTING ARTISTS Compare this fact with the neglect which had settled around the lives of other artists. Poor Morland was Byron's rival in the circulating tattle that was never entirely true. William Collins hurried into print first (1805); then, next year, J. Hassell published, in quarto, the Memoirs of the Life of George Morland, while F. W. Blagdon prepared an oblong folio of twenty full-page engravings, with an introduction of fifteen printed pages. These books exciting controversy, a fourth appeared in 1807, written by George Dawe, who rose to be a Royal Academician (1814). Charles Lamb wrote an essay ridiculing Dawe, some touches of malice finding their way into Elia's fun and wit. As a painter Dawe is forgotten, but his engravings are good; and though he does not see that Morland's pictures are far and away better than his own, yet, after all, his book is worth reading and worth keeping. Its 238 octavo pages are clearly printed, they can be read in two evenings, and their author certainly tries to draw a whole-length portrait without overdoing its darkening shades. There are occasional notes of genuine pity, and these good things would be frequent but for the Puritan in Dawe, who forgets that action of every sort produces a reaction against itself equal to its own vigour; with the result that when persons of genius do become active in popular vices, their nervous energy and their sensitiveness govern their misdoing, and bring about reactions more intense than those that come to downgoing men whose temperaments are ordinary or humdrum. Medical men know that it is extremely difficult, almost impossible, to rescue women who have given themselves up to either drugs or spirits. Now genius has a double sex, it is partly feminine, partly masculine; and the female qualities in men of genius are always incalculably alert during stresses of action and reaction. In our own days several poets and painters, men of genius, have committed suicide in the unoriginal manner chosen by Morland. Did the newspaper press make much ado about their fall } No, it decHned to employ its routine, that ransacks the world's bad news for stunts and headlines. If George Morland had been a very temperate man, like George Stubbs, his death in 1804, at the age of forty-two, would not have been followed in three years by four biographies. Early deaths were common, and lives without vice were unattractive reading at a time when journalists had not yet formed a routine of hysterical display. Collins, Blagdon, Hassell, Dawe, knowing that gossip had enticing value as news, had no cause to say : " With newspapers glutting the people's appetite for detailed vice and crime, it would be abominable if we advertised the follies of poor Morland, whose best work may delight the Before Dinner. MORLAND, ROWLANDSON, AND IBBETSON 147 world hundreds of years after we are forgotten dust." This, happily, is the present attitude of writers towards the occasional men of genius who destroy themselves with drink, or drugs, or with a Byronic mania for women. Nothing is more tragic than the fact that the most gifted are also the most likely to stir up reactions against their own welfare. What pleasure can vanity hope to get from debts, duns, bailiffs, dishonest parasites, alienated friends, and gathering after-effects of excessive drink on the mind and body ? Morland made a list of one day's excesses, then sketched a tombstone with a death's head and cross-bones, and composed his own epitaph : " Here Lies a Drunken Dog." " George Morland's Bub for One Day at Brighton (having nothing to do). " Hollands Gin lu r u 1 r .. " Rum and Milk ^^^^^^ Breakfast. " Coffee— Breakfast. " Hollands " Porter " Shrub "Ale " Hollands and Water " Port Wine with Ginger " Bottled Porter " Port Wine at Dinner and After. " Porter. " Bottled Porter. " Punch. " Porter. " Ale. " Opium and Water. " Port Wine — at Supper. " Gin and Water. " Shrub. " Rum on going to Bed." / Yet there is another side to this tragedy. W. E. Henley said, " In all the range of British art, there are few things better than a good Morland." These sixteen words, monosyllables all but two, contain Morland's life in essence. Genius lives on, no matter what its possessor may be or may do. " The Dancing Dogs," like " The Inside of a Stable," is a good Morland, free from any after-effects of intemperance; while the hunting pieces illustrated here by half-tone blocks are not entirely good, though characteristic, their swift and 148 BRITISH SPORTING ARTISTS assured qualities being somewhat lax within the scope of Morland's original outlook and style. Still, no other painter of his day could have put these compositions upon canvas with so much weight, and with such a lively and natural air of unpremeditation. He painted " The Inside of a Stable " ^ during his Paddington period, when his fondness for riding led him to keep nearly a dozen horses standing at an alehouse, and when bull-baiting, boxing, and other sports occupied overmuch of his time. It was then that he piled up huge debts, with constant help from a host of parasites who drank and fed at his expense. As these hourly companions liked to press around his easel while he worked, Morland had a wooden frame placed across his painting- room with a bar that lifted up, and while on one side of this division he painted some of his best pictures, his toadies on the other side devoured red herrings and tippled gin, preferably without water. His garden in Winchester Row, Paddington, was a small menagerie, where he kept monkeys, goats, pigs, dogs, squirrels, foxes, dormice, a donkey, and an old white horse, which Morland learnt by heart, and carried ever afterwards in his memory as a stock model. It is said that this white horse " was going to the slaughter-house," but not unaided, when Morland bought him. If so, we are reminded of his good nature by many pictures. Two grooms and a footman were other dwellers at Winchester Row, as well as a pupil or so. Morland was particularly fond of pigs and guinea-pigs, and painted them with unrivalled sympathy and success. " As I was walking towards Paddington on a summer morning," says Hassell, " to inquire about the health of a relation, I saw a man posting on before me with a sucking-pig, which he carried in his arms like a child. The piteous squeals of the little animal, and the singular mode of conveyance, drew spec- tators to door and window; the person, however, who carried it minded no one, but to every dog that barked — and there were not a few — he set down the pig, pitted him against the dog, and then followed the chase which was sure to ensue. In this manner he went through several streets in Marylebone, and at last, stopping at the door of one of my friends, was instantly admitted. I also knocked and entered, but my surprise was great on finding this original sitting with the pig still under his arm, and still greater when I was introduced to Morland the painter." Debts accumulating more and more, Morland began to step from quagmires into quicksands. Among other follies he tricked a bun-maker's son, and was obliged to fly from Paddington. The baker, having made up his mind that 1 The National Gallery. fTI ■ ^^H^ ^ ^H ^^^^i* # '9I^^^^BB!^I ^^1 ^H ^^^^^^^B^ ^■BmM^^ tjillMWy ^ ^k ^^^^Hm^^^^^^^^^I ^^^^^^^1 ^H^^Im* i ■ y :#Li. # ^ '£ /^wnBI Jl:f jIiK^'^^I^^I ^^H ^^^BIi^hK^'A ^i> Wj^- t3^ M' 'l '^^/- ,'^3t6m£-^'' ^^^1 H^H ^B^E^^^'^UIRi^^tt^S '^'^ i)fHG^^HB|^ ^^H^IE ^^1 ^■r 4iy^^M |r!i 'S^Ik^^ ^ j£flH| H Hp^^^/ ■■i^^^"' j^ ^ ■1 ^^^iBdBlfl^En^^Hw iMr ^&<' BH ^^^^^^^^^^^p^^^^*^^^H^ 'i^ ^^ *N^;^ il ^^BlH&^yfiii^^u^PVi ■^ "'^^vtUifl i n ^^^^^|^^^^^^|^HfllBHj^^^^|BHBHB|C^^^ " tl^MMtwft^ "^ ^^^^SC«*^^~f &I BHKd^^^^^^^^^ ^S"^*^^ ^^^W'W^ eaSM»j Qh ^^^K^^^^^^^Fa T^^^^^^^B^^^^^^hflk: 1^7 ■ > ■ ^ ■■ 1j 3^^H ^^^N^^^^^^B' T->j; j^mBf^K^^^^^^Sl mrx^^mMSf^ |H Bj^^^^l^HB ,4^ 1 ^^ ^H 11 *ti^^^^^R^ sl ^^^^HJI^^^^^H^^^, ^^'' V f^^ ^ B^ / ilSHk : Ah ^^^H^^^^^^^^P^f 7£T ' M Ww y ^^^^ ^^^^ijii 91 ^^^^^^^^^^^yi::Ji#fs!f 1|^ - ^9 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^I^HIkj&i^''''^^ ' ■-Z**-^ — ^Rr ^^^^^Hp^^ ^^ '^ "tSB^B ^^^^^^^^^^^^lE ^■T**K^ ^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^j^^^^^B^^^^^ / ^^^^1 1 ^H^^^H^^^^^^^F ^H9^^^^^^^^^^ x^^^^^lH ,. ^^H ^^^^^^^^^^^V is ^t ^^^^I^^^^H^^^^^^^^^^B^ .j^K^tj *A Hll^: ' ^LimtA ^ m ^^^^^^ HSKk^^R M Z 5 < ? -J ? o ^ z -J Lil . MORLAND, ROWLANDSON, AND IBBETSON 149 his boy should rise in the world as a Civil Servant, sent the young man with a large sum to buy an appointment. A purchase could not be made, and the disappointed youth on his way home, after stopping at several alehouses, called on Morland, and praised a landscape not yet finished. Afterwards he spoke of his disappointment, and showed Morland the large sum of money. Here was temptation, and Morland fell into it headlong. Aided by wine he asked his visitor to exchange the money for a written promise that the land- scape when finished would belong to the bun-maker. What was a loan under such ideal conditions ! Was it not safely covered ? Wine flowed, the money was lent, and the young man went home so drunk that he could not explain to his father what had happened. Next morning when the truth was told, the bun-maker's shop became a noisy place. Morland 's written promise was cursed furiously ; then a search was made for the borrower, who was not at home. Eventually he was found, but every shilling of the baker's cash had gone. Paddington being now unsafe, Morland, with some ^^4000 of debts upon him, retired to a farmhouse at Enderby, in Leicestershire, where he and his wife lived for some time. In this neighbourhood he greatly improved his rustic style, as remarkable then as was Jean Francois Millet's about seventy years later. Only Morland's new manner was unopposed. Never had he any reason to say, as Millet said, " In art, one has to stake one's skin." It did not matter what he painted, his work was popular, and his fame circulated in prints all over Europe. More than sixty engravers have made his versatility of permanent value to print- sellers and collectors. They range from W. Blake ^ to the sporting Sam Aiken, and from Rowlandson and Gaugain to Bartolozzi, J. Fittler, A. Suntach, S. W. Reynolds, J. R. Smith (a boon companion), John Young, T. Vivares, J. Dean, G. Keating, and James and William Ward, Morland's brothers-in-law. Con- cerning Morland's prints and their unparalleled sale at home, and also abroad, particularly among the French and Germans, George Dawe says : — " Of those of ' Dancing Dogs ' and ' Selling Guinea Pigs,' five hundred pair were sold in a few weeks. ^ One foreign dealer often took as many as would have supplied all England. When the four plates of the ' Deserter ' were published, a single dealer immediately gave an order for nine dozen sets. ' The Effects of Extravagance,' with its companion, were twice engraved, and they have been lately copied in the chalk manner at Paris. Indeed the demand 1 Blake in 1803 engraved two small companion pictures, " The Industrious Cottager," and " The Idle Laundress : Boy robbing Clothes-line." 2 T. Gaugain's stipple engravings of these pictures were pubhshed in 1789-90. 150 BRITISH SPORTING ARTISTS for his prints was so great in France, that they were frequently re-engraved there, and he received from that country advantageous proposals, either to go there to paint or to send over his pictures. To these he paid no attention, for his reputation was established, and he had henceforth more employment in England than he was inclined to execute. . . ." ^ Now the Leicestershire period, 1790-91, and the next two or three years, produced the very best work in his prolific output. He felt safe from duns and bailiffs, and was aided by the friendship of C. Loraine Smith, an ardent sportsman, a discreet adviser, and a versatile amateur artist. Neighbours called Charles Loraine Smith " the Enderby Squire." He and Morland worked together certainly on one occasion, composing a picture named " A Litter of Foxes," in which Morland painted the landscape. I have not seen it yet, except in the coloured engraving by J. Grozer, which is very attractive. In the Christmas Number of The Field for 1920 there is a very good account of Loraine Smith, with many illustrations. He belonged to a very old family, his pedigree going back to that Walter of Lorraine who in 1075 was made Governor of Lorraine. The first baronet. Sir Thomas Loraine, was born in 1637, and the second baronet, born in 1692, married Ann Smith of Enderby, who inherited the Enderby estate from her father, and who in course of time had three grandsons, Sir William (the fourth baronet), the Rev. Lambton Loraine (born 1775), and Charles, who took her maiden surname with his inheritance, becoming Charles Loraine Smith. Two sportsmen of to-day, both lovers of art, are descended from this artistic sportsman. One of them is Sir Percy Loraine, the twelfth baronet, and the other is Mr. D. A. Bevan, of Burloes, near Royston, a great-grandson of Charles Loraine Smith. He has collected all the rare prints after his great-grandfather's work, and he owns the original picture of that famous run of the Quorn hounds which occurred on February 24th, 1800, and which covered twenty-eight miles in two hours and fifteen minutes, from Billesdon Coplow across the Soar, near Whitstone, to Enderby Warren. In this picture, and in the set of prints called " Scenes from the Smoking Hunt," published in 1826, there is no sign of Morland 's influence; but we see at once that Charles Loraine Smith was attracted by Henry Aiken, and that his best work borrows much from Aiken, the most able graphic journalist in the whole range of British sporting art. Compare Loraine Smith's " A Leicestershire Burst " with hunting scenes by W. P. Hodges, or with J. D. Paul's " A Trip to Melton Mowbray," and you will ^ George Dawe, pp. 79-80. /u4ej. ^tif//i. 'Tlatc .7 . .'heu.^ (.■cfti-ract'. '^ p"^ ■^:.r Si ^^^ii£l^i£. :^jSjs:«-ii^'-^ ^i HZ ZO z UJ< do dec >^ ^1 MORLAND, ROWLANDSON, AND IBBETSON 153 he would spoil it; so he drank again to steady his nerves. Now and then he was so weak that he could not stand, and his manservant held him up before the easel. In 1802, after being released from a sponging-house, a stroke of apoplexy made his left hand useless for a time; and yet, two months later, when he could not hold a palette, he made drawings for his man to sell at any price that could be got. Then he was arrested once more for debt, his creditor being a publican to whom he owed about £10. At a sponging-house in Eyre Street Hill, Cold Bath Fields, he made a last effort, with the aid of drink; and he was in the act of sketching a bank and a tree when a fit seized him. " A brain-fever followed, and George Morland expired on October 29th, 1804, aged only forty-two. His wife, on hearing the news, gave a loud shriek, was seized with convulsive fits, and expired four days afterwards. They had had an unfortunate career, but not an altogether unhappy life, for they were always attached to each other. Often they had spoken of death, and they always had said that, if one of them died, the other would not long survive. Their presentiment came true at last, for they died within four days of each other. Nor were they separated after death, for they were buried side by side in the burial-ground of St. James's Chapel." I quote from Richardson, the kindest of Morland's biographers. But it is to be feared that Mrs. Morland died because her health had been ruined by unceasing shame, anxiety and alarm. Morland's death had been expected for some years. Still, expected events are often exceedingly surprising, as they are likely to come in unforeseen ways. Apart from this, Mrs. Morland had always before her mind the awful contrast between her husband's wonderful genius and his downgoing. In his fifteenth year he had exhibited at the Royal Academy, and from that date, 1778, his career had been a tragedy sadder than any other in English art. Let us compare it with some tragedies of French art, choosing a page from Romain Rolland's little vdse book on Jean Frangois Millet : — " The lives of the principal French painters of Millet's day, and of the great landscape painters in particular, constitute a sad martyrology. Except in a few instances, such as those of Corot and Jules Dupre, almost all suffered cruelly from want, indigence, hunger, illness and ill-luck of every sort. The great Theodore Rousseau lived for the greater part of his days in terrible poverty and loneliness, and he died, struck down by general paralysis, with a mad wife beside him. Troyon died insane. Marilhat died insane. Decamps tormented himself his life long, lived without friends, and died in a tragic way. Paul Huet literally nearly died of hunger and lost his health owing to privations. 154 BRITISH SPORTING ARTISTS Even Diaz was acquainted with black poverty and bodily sufferings. It cannot therefore be said that Millet was exceptionally treated by fortune, and he himself refuses to think so. . . . He shared the common fate; he suffered like others from poverty, loneliness and indifference. But that which is exceptional in him and distinguishes him from others is the tranquillity with which he accepts his ill-fortune, as a matter of necessity, a superior and beneficent fate. Human folly, spite and egoism never disturb his admirable calm. ' Yes, there are bad people,' he says simply, ' but there are good ones, and one good makes up to us for many bad. ... I do not complain ' (1844). . . ." Well, these Frenchmen suffered, as a rule, because they were at variance with popular tastes and customs. Morland's case was different, he and his age being allies in good and in bad actions. But the worst point of all has been passed unseen by every one of his biographers; namely, that while he and crowds of other men were destroying their health with drink, ever more and more British soldiers were needed to break the ravaging power of Napoleon. When we remember that Morland was five years younger than Nelson, we cannot say that he had any feeling at all for the immense dangers which had pressed upon his country since 1776, when the American Colonies declared their independence. Artists were slack and lethargic in their attitude towards national service. Not one of them, I believe, " smelled powder." II Let us now turn to Morland's relations with sports. A friend of his declared that he seemed to live in a stable, so complete was his sympathy with horses ; but just as he disliked to work for gentlemen because he did not wish to be governed by their criticisms, so we find in his attitude towards horses that he paid little attention to thoroughbreds, usually choosing those that were old, rough, and clumsy. Even his hunting pictures prove that an equine Hodge was often his ideal for a hunter. Did he ever paint a racing picture ? Only two, I believe, and both are in Morland prose, not in oil-pigments. Before I give these graphic scenes as described by Morland himself, let me draw attention to a couple of rare prints belonging to the same decade of the eighteenth century as Morland's racing adventures. Published on May 20th, 1786, they represent " A Country Race Course with Horses preparing to Start," and " A Country Race Course with Horses Running." These titles are given also in French. They are large prints (25I in. by 17I in.), 1) V <-j Qo i UJ _IUJ -JO 3 >, LL -D MORLAND, ROWLANDSON, AND IBBETSON 155 drawn by W. Mason, well engraved by Jenkins, and aquatinted by Jukes. As pieces of social history, lively and virile, they are as good as descriptions in Smollett's novels. Both are thronged compositions, and the first one shows in its principal episode how a jockey is being " bought " by a scoundrel, and how he is seen by two witnesses, a boy, and the jockey's employer, who owns a grey racer. Instead of making a fuss, the owner is not at all surprised, but prepares to give his horse a strong tonic from a bottle. Liquor will put so much spirit into the grey that his jockey will not be able to pull him in unnoticed by the crowd ! But this idea miscarries, the " bought " jockey losing the race cleverly. These country races are similar to Morland's. At Margate, when he was about twenty-two, he found his way to the racecourse, and very soon, as he wrote to his friend Philip Dawe, he commenced a new business of jockey to the races. " I was sent for to Mount Pleasant by the gentlemen of the Turf to ride a race for the silver cup, as I am thought to be the best horseman here. I went there, and was weighed, and afterwards dressed in a tight striped jacket and jockey's cap, and lifted on the horse, led to the start, placed in the rank and file ; three parts of the people out of four laid great bets that I should win the cup, etc. Then the drums beat, and we started. 'Twas a four-mile heat, and the first three miles I could not keep the horse behind them, being so spirited an animal. By that means he exhausted himself, and I soon had the mortifica- tion to see them come galloping past me, hissing and laughing, while I was spurring his guts out." And this was only the beginning of an adventure. Morland had now to learn that " a person whom the people think have offended them may as well live among a parcel of tigers, as they do not mind killing a man any more than a mad dog." The artist-jockey, having lost the race, was a person to be maimed, if possible, by his enraged backers. Morland relates how he was assailed : — " A mob of horsemen then gathered round, telling me I could not ride, which is always the way if you lose the heat ; they began at last to use their whips, and, finding I could not get away, I directly pulled off my jacket, laid hold of the bridle, and offered battle to the man who began first, though he was big enough to eat me ; several gentlemen rode in, and all the mob turned over to me, and I was led away in triumph with shouts." At another meeting he fared worse : — " I rode for a gentleman, and won the race so completely that, when I came in to the starting-post, the other horses were near half a mile behind me, 156 BRITISH SPORTING ARTISTS upon which near four hundred [Margate] sailors, smugglers, fishermen, etc., set upon me with sticks, stones, waggoners' whips, fists, etc., and one man, an inn-keeper here, took me by the thigh and pulled me off the horse. I could not defend myself. The sounds I heard were. Kill him ! Strip him ! Throw him in the sea ! Cut off his large tail ! and a hundred other sentences rather worse than the first. I got from them once and ran into the booth; some men threw me out amongst the mob again, I was then worse off than ever. Michiner rode in to me, dismounted, and took me up in his arms half beat to pieces, kept crying to the mob to keep back, and that his name was Michiner, and he would notice them. At last, a party of light-horsemen, and several gentlemen, and their servants, some post-boys, hair-dressers, bakers, and several other people I knew, armed themselves with sticks, etc., ran in to my assistance, and brought me a horse, though the mob pressed so hard 'twas long before I could mount. " After I was mounted, and got to some distance, I missed my hat; at last I saw a man waving a hat at me ; I rode to him, and found him to be a person I knew very well. He found means to get it me whilst two sailors were fighting who should have it. I went to the King's Head at night, met many of my bloods and bucks. . . . None of them could imagine what was the cause of the riot, but supposed it was a parcel of blackguards who had been laying sixpences and shillings against the horse I rode, and afterwards, by the riot, wanted to make it appear 'twas an unfair start, though one started before me." After three crownsworth of punch at the King's Head, Morland and his friends began to seek reprisals : — " We got into a fishing-house to look for some of them; however, there were so many in the house that, though we were armed, they put us all to flight. It was very dark, I ran over the drawbridge, a stout sailor pursued me, and threatened vengeance. He catched me by the collar. I had a stick with a sword in it ; he did not see that, and whilst he was telling me what he would do, I found means to draw it, and had very nearly run him through. Then, some of my companions coming up, he got his gruel. I found the man who dismounted me,i and he humbly begged pardon, as did most of the rest. One savage fellow, who is a sore pest of this town, everybody advised me to enter an action against him, which I did this morning. . . ." This being life at Margate in the seventeen hundred and eighties, it seems natural after these adventures that Morland's favourite horses were not race- horses, and that he drew subjects from other sports, fishing, shooting, and hunt- ing. His " Ass Race," engraved in coloured mezzotint by W. Ward, 1789, ^ A publican, you will remember. :^nv^f9f?^r - A COUNTRY RACECOURSE OF MORLAND'S TIME. Drawn by W. MASON, engraved by T. Jenkins, and aquatinted by F JUKES. MORLAND, ROWLANDSON, AND IBBETSON 157 is entertaining. Even " A Bear Hunt " is found among his compositions, well engraved by S. W. Reynolds, 1796. Let us see v^^hat we can collect of interest to fishermen from a chronological table of Morland prints : — 1780. The Angler's Repast, the earliest print after Morland, mezzotint by William Ward, published by J. R. Smith. Reissued nine years later; see below. In this picture ladies and gentlemen are lunching on a riverside, attended by a negro footman. 1788. Children Fishing, coloured mezzotint by Philip Dawe, published by W. Dickinson. The pendant of Children Gathering Blackberries. 1 789 . Juvenile Navigators, coloured mezzotint by William Ward, published by J. R. Smith. 1789. A Party Angling, coloured mezzotint by G. Keating, published by J. R. Smith. 1789. The Angler's Repast, coloured mezzotint by W. Ward. Pendant of A Party Angling. 1790. Jack in the Bilboes, and The Contented Waterman, coloured mezzo- tint by W. Ward, published by P. Cornman. 1793. Smugglers, and Fishermen, mezzotints by James Ward, published by J. R. Smith. 1799. The Fisherman's Hut, mezzotint by J. R. Smith, published by J. R. Smith. 1799. Selling Fish, mezzotint by J. R. Smith, published by J. R. Smith. 1800. The Fisherman's Dog, mezzotint by S. W. Reynolds, published by S. W. Reynolds. 1800. Fishermen, mezzotint by John Young. 1801. Two Boys Fishing, etched print published by J. P. Thompson. 1805. Fishermen going out, mezzotint by S. W. Reynolds, published by J. R. Smith. There are two coursing prints. The first one dates from 1792, and is etched by Morland himself. The second one, a stipple engraving, is among the latest prints, for it appeared in 1814. HI Whenever I think of Morland in his relation to the open-air life, several facts ally him to a couple of boon companions who were men of genius, and whose lives were harmed by dissipation. Thomas Rowlandson and Julius Caesar 158 BRITISH SPORTING ARTISTS Ibbetson go well with Morland, each of them, in his own way, showing that he had a style in his blood, and that he could turn many aspects of life into art without becoming sentimental, like the too popular Academician, William Redmore Bigg (1753-1828), and several others. Rowlandson, indeed, in his caricatures and satirical sketches, wishing to employ his full-blooded observa- tion as a Rabelais among draughtsmen, was often coarse, and now and then even gross. But at his best he is a genuine master, with a weight of style and a variety of humour which are often graceful, and always memorably his own. The son of a London tradesman, and born in Old Jewry, 1756, he entered the schools of the Royal Academy when he was a small boy ; and he cannot have been more than sixteen when he was sent for a couple of years to study in Paris, after which he worked for a further term in the Academy Schools. His abilities were so great, and his training was so thorough, that he might easily have taken high rank among the most imaginative artists. In his nineteenth year he made a stir at the R.A. with a drawing of " Delilah Visiting Samson in Prison "; and his early portraits had uncommon promise. But the fever of a drinking age was in his blood, and humour and conviviality kept him in the great noisy welter of town amusements. Then, suddenly, his father's business faiUng, Rowlandson tried to support himself, but was hindered by a devoted aunt, a Frenchwoman, who loved his genius and his frank good nature; and perhaps she heard no more about his outside doings than suggested just a few wild oats. The aunt died, leaving him a sum of money amounting to some ;(^7ooo. With this capital Rowlandson let himself go, and soon it was swallowed up by gaming tables and other popular things. Afterwards he began to make fun of himself and of all the world, drawing with wonderful rapidity scenes of daily Ufe and manners, all more or less tinged with caricature, and social and political satires. After 1787 no work of his appeared at the Royal Academy. His last exhibits were : " The Morning Dram, or a Huntsman Rising " ; " Grog on Board A Ship " ; "A French Barracks " ; and " Country- men and Sharpers." Physically Rowlandson must have been as virile as his work, for he lived to be seventy-one, despite his convivial dissipation. And everyone admitted that, though tempted by his gambler's life to become slovenly and unbalanced, tricky and unscrupulous, he was invariably loyal to his word, unlike Morland. Publishers trusted him, and he was never behindhand with his drawings, an uncommon virtue among illustrators. A young collector of sporting sketches, and of country life interesting to sportsmen, cannot do better than place Rowlandson, and Ibbetson also, in the MORLAND, ROWLANDSON, AND IBBETSON 159 front line of his research, one reason being that his hobby will conduct him into many pleasant byways where he will pick up a great deal of entertaining old social history. For Ibbetson is equally saturated with the spirit of the same period, only his grip upon life is different and he worked far more often in oil- colours than Rowlandson, whose favourite technical methods unite pen-drawn outHnes to washes of water-colour. Ibbetson did charming country-life pieces in water-colour; and his pastorals in oil-pigment, low in tone, and easily recognised by their painter's fondness for yellow ochre, have a swift and firm directness of touch, influenced partly by Richard Wilson, but mainly by Morland, who liked Ibbetson as a boon companion. Several times they worked together; one signed picture by this collaboration — a landscape, with ruins, cattle, and figures — was sold at Christie's on June 15th, 1891, for Izs 4*. Ibbetson was born at Scarborough, 1759, and came to London at the age of seventeen. Twelve years later he went as draughtsman in Cathcart's embassy to China, but returned from Java after Cathcart's death there. Tnen for a considerable time he worked entirely for dealers, living at Kilburn, a charming rustic neighbourhood. He married, and many children were born to him in the midst of poverty; eight of them died one after another, and, finally, the death of his wife in 1794 affected him so much that brain fever struck him down. Soon after his recovery financial troubles became acute, so he left London for the North of England, and did not return till 1800. Next year he married again, and, to escape his creditors, fled for his honeymoon to Amble- side, and later to Masham in Yorkshire, where he remained, dying there on October 13th, 1817, at the age of fifty-eight. Sporting subjects in Ibbetson are uncommon, but much else in his work is valuable to that complete study of sport which includes vanished phases of country life and customs. This applies also to Rowlandson, as to Morland. There is more English sportsmanship in Ibbetson 's rustic figure subjects and cattle pictures than in rocking-horse gallops by F. Sartorius, who never learnt how to paint. Rowlandson is liked on the Continent, and a great deal of his work has gone — and is going — to the United States. Who are the fortunate owners of his best sporting sketches and water-colour drawings ? One of his coloured sketches — a very rapid one, wherein he composes a merry fox-hunt over low stone walls among the hills — is reproduced in colour for this book ; but there are better examples, and I have failed to find them. Two illustrations are given of Ibbetson, reproduced from a volume of his water-colour drawings i6o BRITISH SPORTING ARTISTS which may be seen at Mr. W. T. Spencer's shop in New Oxford Street, London, and which throws a new Hght on the artist's varied sympathy for animals, both foreign and British. The drawings are signed and dated, and the volume contains engravings of them all. Ibbetson responds as a naturalist to the animals that he represents, passing from a racehorse to a number of different mice, for example, then to a scene of hare-hunting, and another of tiger-hunting. One drawing shows how natives attack porcupines. Rowlandson drew Morland's portrait several times. There are three good examples in the Print Room of the British Museum, whole lengths, and standing. The best one is slightly tinted with water-colour, and measures i2| in. by 8| in. Morland in a lazy mood stands with his back to a fire and a decorated mantelpiece, his hands behind him and his face seen in three-quarters turned left. He is wearing a round hat with a broadish brim, a little turned down, a green coat, long and rather creased ; an easy waistcoat, striped blue and white, tight breeches and slim top-boots. One looks for spurs, but they are absent. The hat is pressed low over the forehead; the head is a little raised, for Morland glances up. A weak full mouth is dominated by dark eyes full of alert ability. It is easy to compare this tall whole-length portrait with the frontispiece in George Dawe's Life of Morland. Rowlandson's reveals much more of the man. There is a looseness in the body that suggests late hours with drink. The other portrait was painted by J. R. Smith in 17Q2, after Mor- land's return from Leicestershire, with his health considerably improved. The forehead is good, and the eyes are very fine. In 1790 Rov/landson etched, and Sam Aiken aquatinted, four of Morland's pictures : Snipe Shooting, with Men and Dogs in Winter; Duck Shooting, with Dogs and Men in a Boat; Partridge Shooting, and Pheasant Shooting. To find three artists in a single sporting print is always entertaining. Let us see what other shooting pieces are found among Morland prints : — 1790. La Chasse de la Becassine : Snipe Shooting, fine engraving by A. Suntach. 1 79 1. La Chasse de la Becasse : Woodcock Shooting. Same engraver .^ 1791. La Chasse du Canard : Duck Shooting, the same engraver. 1791. La Chasse du Lievre : Hare Shooting, by the same engraver. 1794. The First of September, Morning; The First of September, Evening, coloured mezzotints by William Ward. 1 A picture of Woodcock Shooting, 18 in. by 24 in., attributed to Morland, and initialed G. M., was sold at Christie's, April 14th, 1888, for £45 3s. o z I- o o X CO o .^ c ;:r Q I E i z z I UJ < X MORLAND, ROWLANDSON, AND IBBETSON i6i 1795. The Benevolent Sportsman, and The Sportsman's Return,^ mezzo- tints by J. Grozer. 1799. Setters, coloured mezzotint by S. W. Reynolds. 1800. The Poacher, mezzotint by S. W. Reynolds. 1800. Two Pointers, etched by T. Vivares. 1801. The Rabbit Warren, Men with Greyhounds, aquatinted by S. Aiken, who in the same year made a print after Morland's Sportsmen Refreshing. 1803 and 1805. The Weary Sportsman, engraved by W. Bond. In a fine coloured impression this engraving is very desirable. 1805. Partridge-Shooting, mezzotint by E. Jones. 1805. Pointer and Hare, line engraving by J. Scott. 1806. The Warrener : a cottage door, and an old man with dead rabbits. Mezzotint by William Ward. 1806. Setters, mezzotint by William Ward. IV Next, as regards Morland's hunting subjects, there is a good example at South Kensington, a small picture belonging to Ashbee's Bequest. It may have been intended to hang in a series with two high-spirited little Morlands ^ that were lent by Sir Charles Tennant to the Grosvenor Gallery, in 1888, when A Century of British Art attracted Londoners. One, unsigned and un- dated, was called " The Find "; the other, undated, but initialed, represented a full cry. A hunting series has generally four episodes, and George Dawe speaks of four pictures of Fox-Hunting owned in his day by a Mr. Weston of the Borough. The late P. A. B. Widener, of Ashbourne, near Philadelphia, U.S.A., had in his large collection four Morlands,^ and among them a big hunting-piece, 56 in. by 74 in. An uneven hillock, with trees on it, forms a big portion of the background, and below it hounds are killing their prey, watched by five mounted sportsmen, not including the whip, who is afoot near his hunter. On our right a besmocked countryman looks on ; and over there on the left, beyond the hillock, some hounds are coming up, and a rider on a grey horse leaps a timber ^ These pictures were exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1792. But there are two paintings by Morland called The Sportsman's Return. In Grozier's print the sportsman holds up a pheasant, while in another picture he holds up a hare. 2 Little Morlands, 10^ in. by 15 in., canvas. * The Duck Shooting etched by Rowlandson, a painting 15 in. by 20 in. ; Gipsies begging from a Gamekeeper who passes by on horseback attended by two dogs, 26 in. by 20 in. ; ^ and a Farmyard with Hogs and Pigs, 25 in. by 30 in. ^" M i62 BRITISH SPORTING ARTISTS fence, and a distance of trees and hills prevents the composition from being shut up, enclosed and cramped. This painting went to America from the T. Page Darby Collection, and it was exhibited at Burlington House in 1882.^ Though a typical picture of its period, there are points in it which do not look like Morland's; they suggest a collaborator. Dawe does not help us here, his feeling for sport being cold. He relates that a Mrs. Donatts in 1807 had six Fox-Hunting Pieces; but leaves them undescribed. Five-and-twenty years ago, in the John Fleming Collection, there were two hunting pictures, a pair, 31 in. by 41 in., Foxhunters Leaving a Wayside Inn, and The Death. Both were signed, and the second was dated, 1803, the year before Morland's death. ^ The late Sir Walter Gilbey, at Elsenham Hall, Essex, had a signed " Death " measuring 56^ in. by 92I in.; and another signed " Death," a picture 20 in. by 16 in., dated 1794, and etched by J. Wright, used to be at Tandridge Court, Oxted, Surrey. A fourth " Death of the Fox," engraved by E. Bell in 1800, signed by Morland, and dated 1794, was sold at Christie's, May 9, 1896, for 300 guineas. J. Wright etched six hunting scenes after Morland, and published them in 1794-95 :— Foxhunters and Hounds leaving the Inn. Foxhunters and Hounds in a Wood. Full Cry. Fox about to be killed. Huntsmen and Hounds. Huntsmen and Hounds at the Blue Bell Door, E. Bell's prints after Morland's fox-hunting are coloured mezzotints, published in 1800 : — Going Out. Going into Cover. The Check. The Death. ^ A Hunting Scene, 54 in. by 73 in., which had been exhibited at Burlington House in 1882, was sold at Christie's, July i8th, 1892, for £504. It was initialed G. M., and sold as a Morland. 2 See Vol. II of Ralph Richardson's Morland, p. 19. " Fox-hunters leaving a Wayside Inn. Five horsemen and pack and a small dark terrier with light brown muzzle (the original fox-terrier). A rustic on horseback looks on, and holds another horse at the door of inn, on sign of which is painted a horse. "The Death." Hounds are kiUing the fox, and the huntsman (in pink) is whipping them off. The small terrier is near the hounds. Hunters are arriving." uJoo tUco ^ o > lb Ceo B .-?:' LU C S I si MORLAND, ROWLANDSON, AND IBBETSON 163 It is interesting to note that Morland in the year of his death exhibited at the Royal Academy " A Landscape, with Hounds in Full Chase "; and the last early print published after his death, ninety-eight years ago (1824), repre- sented a fox-hunt, engraved from a tiny picture — a canvas only 5I in. by 7 in. — that came at last into the hands of Morland's friendliest biographer, Mr. Ralph Richardson, F.R.S.E., who wrote of it as follows in 1895 : — " A red-coated huntsman on a grey horse is followed by a clean-shaven, large-nosed huntsman wearing a blue coat and red collar, and mounted on a brown horse having a blue girth-band. In the distance are other red-coated huntsmen, to whom the first waves his cap and apparently halloos. A pollard oak is to the right, and a hillside and distant blue hills form the background. A woodcut after this picture formed an illustration to an edition of Wordsworth's poems, perhaps in reference to ' Simon Lee, the old Huntsman,' of whom the poet sang : — " ' No man like him the horn could sound, And hill and valley rang with glee When echo bandied, round and round. The halloo of Simon Lee.' " ^ 1 A replica of this picture by Morland is found in the catalogue of the famous Abiss and Phillips Collection of Fifty-three Morlands, only the size, 6^ in. by 8^ in., is larger. See Richardson's second volume, p. 67. CHAPTER VII HO WITT, JAMES WARD, AND BEN MARSHALL I Samuel Howitt was born in 1765. He inherited the ardent history of a Nottinghamshire Quaker family, and perhaps his versatile high spirits may be attributed to a reaction against that passive fortitude with which the Society of Friends had resisted oppression. We have only to read the life of George Fox, or the simple and frank history of Milton's young friend, Thomas EUwood, to gain a living knowledge of a time when Quakers, as Ellwood related, were assailed with " great rage, blows, punchings, beatings, and imprisonments." This persecution was inherited by many families, true stories of the old devilries being handed on in records of the pious bravery shown by Quakers ; and when a lad of genius grows up among stories that stir his heart and fire his imagination, none can say what the results will do or will become. Samuel Howitt is, I think, a case in point, his varied art being completely opposed to Thomas EUwood's quiescent courage. It is an art full of impulse and adventure; it slays and it grows and invents concurrently; it loves life because men have to conquer dangers before they can reach any aim worth striving for; and, considered as art, it is all the more attractive because it is unstudied, a thing that grows of its own accord, so to speak. That it remains an amateur is of no consequence, because Howitt appears in so many guises, and performs so many parts, that one is glad to accept him as a natural improvisatore. At first he was a young fellow with independent means, living at Chigwell in Epping Forest, and gaining at first hand a knowledge of field sports that would be his breadwinner after money troubles had pressed him into profes- sional work as an artist. Sport becoming too expensive, he set up as a drawing- master in London, and romped through an immense amount of sketchy original work. His wife was Rowlandson's favourite sister, and he made many a drawing in the Rowlandson manner ; so a sketch of his life brings us near again to the Morland period. 164 -"oc ii < UJ CO CL 5g oi > o o oo CM(^''^^ ( ^i«-: ' '■''g ' -^'" HOWITT, JAMES WARD, AND BEN MARSHALL 165 Hewitt's earliest exhibited pictures were three hunting scenes drawn pretty freely, then stained with water-colour. They were seen at the Spring Gardens Rooms in 1783; and two years later the Royal Academy accepted a couple of his landscapes. Though this beginning was good, something or other unknown came between him and the R.A., for there was a gap of twenty years in his record as an exhibitor, stretching from 1794 to 1814. After 1815 another gap was formed, ending when he died at Somers Town in 1822. Howitt was equally fond of oils and water-colours; and his etchings are spirited and entertaining. One of his etched prints represents many sorts of hunting combined into a decorative composition. It is handled throughout with skill, yet is known to only a few sportsmen.^ Some writers declare that Howitt " spent many years in Bengal," a state- ment which is not confirmed by the Dictionary of National Biography, whose article on Howitt — it was published in 1891 — contains information supplied by Howitt's granddaughter, Mrs. Samuel Hastings. It was not at first hand by visiting India, but by working in collaboration with Captain T. Williamson, that Howitt prepared colour plates for a book on Oriental Field Sports, pubHshed in 1817. Williamson made the sketches and Howitt put his own genius into them; none can study the history of big-game hunting in art without con- sulting his huge book. It is a rarer work than it should be because vandalistic printsellers — small men in bystreets — have destroyed many copies in order to earn more profit by selling the plates one by one. As a sketchy illustrator Howitt is particularly notable. There is something in the English genius that is friendly to illustrated books, and that creates for itself a very protean reputation among bookmen. In A New Work of Animals, published in 181 1, and consisting of 56 plates, Howitt seems to compete against Barlow and Wootton, for his designs are inspired by the Fables of i^sop, and Gay, and Phgedrus. Both British and Foreign Field Sports are illustrated by his art; there is also the Angler's Manuel, 12 plates, 1808; and as for The British Sportsman, 181 2, many a pleasant hour can and should be passed with its 70 illustrations. Yet Howitt has not a great many friends among sportsmen. Markets have traditions as well as fashions, and neither fashions nor traditions have kept him before the purchasing public that cares for old sports and pastimes. One reason is that collectors, and especially young collectors, think of sporting art much too frequently as a thing to be hung up against walls, though it is often better in bookcases and in portfolios. If Howitt is accepted as a jolly 1 The Victoria and Albert Museum has a print of this long and lively etching. i66 BRITISH SPORTING ARTISTS sportsman in books, in small drawings, and also in detached prints for a port- folio, he can be kept cheek by jowl with his many English kinsmen, ranging from Barlow to the gentle Londoner Robert Hills (1769-1844), whose water- colours and etchings of animals, and particularly of deer, belong to sport, and have merit. Indeed, Hills receives notice from Gilbert Redgrave's History of Water-Colour Painting in England, while Howitt is omitted. Hills dwindles away into stipple and prettiness, but at his best he is a painter-etcher to be portfolioed. The British Museum has a good and varied collection of his etchings, including many rare states, with much evidence of the care with which Hills corrected his tentative proofs. It is always entertaining to see prints upon which an artist has worked. II To turn from Robert Hills to James Ward, R.A., is like receiving an electric shock, his pictures having more ambition and more adventurous energy than other Englishmen of his time dared to employ when country life and sport were united to ample landscapes. Ward lived to be ninety, dying November 23rd, 1859; ^^ attempted most genres, first as an engraver, next as a painter under the influence of his brother-in-law George Morland, and then as a disciple very eager to renew the school of Rubens. No fewer than 298 of his pictures were hung by the Royal Academy. He became A.R.A. in 1807, and R.A. in 181 1, his forty-second year; not a bad record for a man who did not obey ruling fashions; but he expected a more rapid rise, forgetting that the most difficult of all things in art is to prevent a rapid rise from becoming all at once an equally rapid fall. To-day James Ward is admirable, not mainly because of his productions perhaps, but because the history of his time needs the manly, swaggering aims that he wished to make real with spontaneous vigour and ease of execution. Somehow he failed to see that his god Rubens had marvellous invention as well as wonderful varied action, and that this invention was accompanied by an expressive power of drawing the human form under conditions so difficult and so diverse that the master's eyes and his hand and mind worked together with astonishing accord. Ward would have been at home in Antwerp if he had been born there when Rubens turned pupils into big masters. He came too late into the development of an art, with sympathies that befitted an earlier time and school; a great misfortune, but one of pretty frequent occurrence among men of uncommon gifts. When Ward declined to burn incense before the idolised old Italians, CO OJ < €1 m ';: O t • -5. X ^ oi "^ w\ CO a CO S Z i^ o< Ecrf CO , or Q DCC 05 OS HOWITT, JAMES WARD, AND BEN MARSHALL 167 English art-criticism looked upon Rubens and Jordaens as too fleshy for an English society that often behaved like Sir Toby Belch, and that laughed over the coarsest caricatures by Bunbury and Gillray. Ill There are two big-game subjects in which James Ward appears as painter and engraver. One is a mezzotint 23! in. by 17I in.; it represents a lion and a tiger fighting just inside the mouth of a cave, and the lion has gained too easy a victory. Tigers have defeated lions many a time. The other print, approxi- mately of the same size, has a similar motif; a lion near a cave's mouth prepares to attack a tiger, that crouches beside his partly devoured prey, a deer of some sort. The tiger is preferable as a life study; the lion thrusts out his lower jaw too much, and seems to have a broken bridge to his nose. Neither print is equal to John Dixon's mezzotint after Stubbs of the tigress lying below rocks. In 1 8 14 J. Scott engraved for the Old Sporting Magazine a James Ward portrait of Sir John Shelley's racehorse Walton, neighing at the door of a stable. According to Mr. Grundy's excellent memoir of Ward, Shelley paid one hun- dred and twenty guineas for this painting, which measured 51 in. by 66 in. It was seen at the British Institute in 1818, and at Christie's eleven years later, when its price fell to forty-eight guineas, helping to prove that its painter was not popular among racing men. At the same auction Ward's portrait of the Duke of Grafton's brood mare Primrose, a beautiful grey, with a foal, in a fodder yard, fetched only thirty-nine guineas, its original price being seventy; and the same mishap came, also in 1829, to Ward's picture of Smolensko, exhibited at the Royal Academy two years before. Another horse portrait — Old Ccelebs, an aged racer, painted on a canvas 18 in. by 13 in. — -was bought in at thirteen and a half guineas, a third of its original price; while Guy Mannering, painted in 1822, fell from thirty guineas to five. Ward painted three pictures of the hunter-like racer Dr. Syntax, belonging to R. Riddell, and painted also by Clifton Tomson. No. i was bought by Mr. Witham for ninety guineas ; No. 2 by Mr. Riddell for a hundred guineas ; and the third is regarded by Mr. Grundy as a composite picture, the horse copied from No. i and the landscape background, with distant hills, from No. 2, as in Ward's good lithograph of Dr. Syntax. The failure at public sales of Ward's racehorse portraits has never been explained. Did specialists believe that he had not lived long enough with horses to know much about them .'' No vanity is more unblushing than that i68 BRITISH SPORTING ARTISTS which talks as a speciaHst about horses. Even sailors when they talk about the sea and about ships are less dogmatic than these devotees of stables; and as sailors generally believe that no painter can know what they do of seafaring life, so horsemen generally think overmuch of their own knowledge when they study horses painted by a James Ward, whose name is associated with other subjects. They should remember that horses differ as variously in form and proportions as do men and women, and that artists should portray them as they are. Besides, several of the most noted sires on the Turf have been ill- shaped, like the famous Blacklock. There are lithographs to prove that James Ward is often easy and confident when he draws horses, and that his touch has a supple quality which J. N. Sartorius never achieved, and which Henry Aiken missed frequently. A set of well-chosen lithographs, not yet valued by sportsmen, was dedicated by James Ward to George the Fourth, who wished to improve the breed of horses by keeping the Malcolm Arabian in public service at small fees. The prints are good portraits of notable horses, like Soothsayer, Monitor, Phantom, Walton, Leopold, and also the Duke of Wellington's beloved charger Copen- hagen, by Eclipse, out of a mare named Lady Catherine. This mare when in foal was General Grosvenor's charger at the siege of Copenhagen, so that her son's bravery as a war-horse may be regarded as inherited. It is odd that James Ward's lithographs are not yet collected ; they should receive as much attention as Charles Turner's fine colour-print after Ward's hunting picture, Ralph John Lambton, with his horse Undertaker, calling Hounds out of Cover. Now and then Ward's lithographs, selected proofs retouched by himself, are printed on India paper, and come into the market in thirteen oblong folio plates bound up as a book. Some twenty years ago I examined a set of this quality bound in Russia, and priced at ^(^20, a very inadequate sum. It is difficult, and perhaps impossible, to find a picture in which Ward's moods and methods as a sporting artist are alembicated, so to speak. I have chosen a picture called " Coursing in Sussex," which represents his weight and his power, with a sense of dramatic unity between all the component parts of its large-handed composition. It contains much more of himself than we find in such a frankly Rubens-Hke big work as the " Bulls Fighting " ; and we see here and there that he is employing with a touch of his own hints carefully chosen from George Morland. Sturdy and characteristic movements are suggested with a minimum of physical action, and rider and horse are such old friends and so accustomed to each other that really they seem to have a sort of family likeness. Is it Ward himself on his favourite hack ? Technically, Q-S Z < Z 5 OT ■^ t - 5 1 _i -^ ^ -t- o -^ z '5 cc .5 UJ .^ < ~ _l ^ O S < ? o ; HOWITT, JAMES WARD, AND BEN MARSHALL 169 his manipulation of paint is not spontaneous; it hardens now and then and becomes laboured, probably because he was a practical engraver before he tried to draw with a full brush and with a modelling freedom. IV From Ward, with his Anglo-Flemish adventures, we pass on to Benjamin Marshall (1767-1835), who desired to be genuinely English, and whose art changed from phase to phase till at last its technical qualities came as often from the painter's thumb as from brushes. Simultaneously with this growing fond- ness for thumb-painting another characteristic became more and more active, an increased liking for anatomy, as though Marshall had taken so much pleasure in painting a very thin horse that ever afterwards he lingered too affectionately over the ribs and the muscles and tendons. This phase of his art has been condemned as " too mappy," but it has character, original character, and Marshall is among the few English sporting artists who are worth accepting as painters through all the variations of their honest and faulty studies. Mr. Munnings follows his work from phase to phase, and with more admiration than censure. The most common defect came from a fashion of the time, which regarded an absurdly small head as a beautiful adornment for a thorough- bred horse, just as Alexandre Dumas liked to imagine that a hand too small to be strong was all right if a powerful swordsman happened to be of aristo- cratic birth. Photography has done one useful thing by showing coldly in profile portraits the correct proportion between every racer's head and body. Till the camera became a decisive critic in this particular, scarcely a painter dared to make the head important enough. Some of Marshall's racehorses and hunters have heads even ridiculously small, but his clients had other views, and were very well pleased. Herring is another expert whose horses' heads are often too short. Though Marshall was a man of mark, and though he remains one to this day, he has been snubbed by books of reference as well as by public galleries. Bryan's Dictionary in its most recent edition is the worst offender, giving only six famished lines to his seven-and-sixty years of life, and his forty-six years of professional work. Students turn to Bryan for information and find nothing more than forty-one words, as follows : — " Marshall, Benjamin, an English animal painter, born in 1767, who practised in London and Newmarket. His speciality was horses, ^ and he contributed 1 An ignorant statement, for Marshall's human figures are often better than his horses. 170 BRITISH SPORTING ARTISTS [forty-nine subjects} to the Sporting Magazine. His works occasionally appeared at the Academy between 1800 and 1819. He died in 1835." The Dictionary of National Biography omitted Marshall altogether, but the Editor must have received many protests, for a brief biography was put into the Supplementary Volumes. Even then Sir Walter Gilbey was not chosen to write the biography, though he was best fitted for the job. Still, the D.N.B. apologised for a bad oversight, and British and foreign students can learn from it something about a man who is certain to endure as a painter while sports remain popular. They can learn, for example, that Marshall exhibited only thirteen pictures at the Royal Academy ; but they should learn also that he stopped exhibiting on three, not two occasions. There was a gap of four years between 1801 and 1806; of six years between 1812 and 181 8; and between 1 8 19 and the year of his death he refused for some reason to be a contributor. It would be interesting to know for what reason he turned his back thrice on the leading exhibition after having shown there some very remarkable work. Perhaps he felt slighted because, after the death of Stubbs (1806) and of Sawrey Gilpin (1807), he had not been elected A.R.A., certainly an honour that he merited. His high value as an artist in 1806 can be judged from a large painting exhibited then at the R.A. and now owned by Mr. Basil Dighton of Savile Row, London, W. It is a life-size portrait of a celebrated shot, J. J. Shaddick (1767-1835), accompanied by his chestnut horse and also by two pointers — a brown and white fellow that gazes up at his master, and a fatly painted white dog with a tan-coloured head, that looks rather sheepishly at the horse, whose head is lowered in a gentle manner to make friends. Shaddick is turned towards the right, and holds his long gun under his right arm, while with the left hand he holds up a dead pheasant. Considered as a whole, is there a shooting portrait picture with the merits of this one that dates from the same period ? If so, I should like to know its whereabouts. Stubbs himself, fond as he was of shooting motifs, never encountered at close portrait range so many difficulties, and in a scale which, due allowance being made for effects of relative perspective, seems to be the scale of nature. The white dog is nearest to us, and the paint is laid on with a loaded quality of studied texture very seldom employed by early sporting painters.^ Behind, right, is the other dog, turned towards the right with his right paw raised, but with the head turned left to look up at Shaddick, who is placed unobtrusively ^ It reappeared, ten years later, in H. B. Chalon's " Unkennelling the Royal Staghounds on Ascot Heath." -I s -I 5 < 5 I i < ^ ou t^ >.?^ ".It °:~:§ < ~'o N