ANIMAL PAINTERS OF ENGLAND FROM THE YEAR 1650 A brief history of their lives and works Illustrated with twenty-eight specimens of their paintings, chiefly from COMPILED BY SIR WALTER GILBEY, BART. VOL. I. London VINTON & CO. 9, NEW BRIDGE STREET, LUDGATE CIRCUS, E.C. INTRODUCTION. PICTORIAL records possess a value which in some departments of history is even greater than that of the written word. The most minutely detailed description of the writer conveys less to us than the brush of the artist, and there are matters which only the painter can save from oblivion. Social history would be incomplete without its artistic exponents; and the history of British fieldsports perhaps owes more than that of other institutions to the painter. More especially is this the case in relation to the Turf, the Hunting-field and the Road. The details which by reason of their absolute familiarity or contemporary insignificance escape the chronicler are perpetuated by the artist. We learn more concerning the dress and equipment of our forefathers on the race-course, in the huntingfield, on the coach-box, in covert and by the river-side from a glance at an old painting than we can glean from perusal of many volumes. More than this, old portraits of thoroughbreds, hunters, hacks, coach-horses, heavy draught-horses, and domestic cattle, serve a useful purpose which is apt to be overlooked. These pictures viewed in chronological order show us the various stages through which the four-footed servants of man have passed ere they attained their present states of development; and they may be of service in indicating how breeders should proceed in order to eliminate defects and secure more perfect adaptability to our present requirements. The Horse as it was a century or more ago was not as it is to-day. If we are not wedded to our own opinions concerning equine characteristics 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 race-horse in the middle of the eighteenth century was one hand and a half less than the average height of the race-horse at the end of the nineteenth century? Admiral the Hon. Henry John Rous, the greatest authority on race-horses and racing, in Baily's Magazine of Sports and Pastimes, 1860, 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 last century has been increasing in stature, on an average one inch in twenty-five years, till we now seldom proclaim him a race-horse 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. It is somewhat strange that no work has yet appeared which chronicles the names and performances of those artists who have devoted their talents to the portrayal of animal life and scenes of sport; and it is with the view of supplying this blank that the following chapters have been compiled. The English school of animal painters is one of comparatively recent date; it is perhaps not generally known that prior to the year 1700, there were but two artists who made the delineation of animals a speciality; these were Francis Barlow, born in 1640, and Luke Cradock, born in 1657. Charles Collins, born in 1680, has left proof of remarkable ability in paintings of bird life, but by far the better part of his work was done during the earlier decades of the eighteenth century. Peter Tilleman, a German by birth, but an Englishman by adoption, painted many racing pictures; but inasmuch as he was born in 1684, his artistic career began with the opening years of the eighteenth century. The same remark applies to John Wootton, born 1685, who must be regarded as the first great English animal painter. Prior to 1700, the only important painters resident in this country were natives of Germany, Holland, Spain, France and Belgium. We owe much to these artists for most of them established art schools and instructed our countrymen in art; the works of our earlier animal painters have therefore the additional interest which accrues to evidence of this foreign influence. The amount of information now obtainable concerning the lives of these earlier painters is small and what has been procured is the result of some considerable enquiry and research. Art in seventeenth-century England received little encouragement and but meagre support; the demand for artistic productions was limited and such men as Cradock, Collins and Casteels found their abilities most often in request for decorative work, the adornment of |