Fri, 08/12/2022 - 11:39pm

Stubbs and His Spaniels

Both painter and dogs were favorites of British aristocrats

George Stubbs (1724-1806) was famously the most sought after painter of horses by all the leading aristocrats of his day who had a passion for breeding and/or racing horses. He was born in Liverpool, the son of a leather dresser (one who prepares the skins after they have been tanned or otherwise preserved). Stubbs worked at his father’s trade until the age of 15 or 16, at which point he told his father he wished to become a painter. Eventually his father accepted his son’s choice of career path on the condition he could find an appropriate mentor.

The young Stubbs approached the Lancashire painter and engraver Hamlet Winstanley, who lived on the Knowsley estate near Liverpool and who was mainly active as a portraitist and engraver. Stubbs was with Winstanley for only a few short weeks when they parted company over exactly which pictures Stubbs could work on copying. Nevertheless, while with Winstanley he did have the opportunity to study the art collection at Knowsley Hall.

Thereafter as an artist, Stubbs was self-taught. He had a passion for anatomy from his childhood, and in or around 1744, he moved to York to pursue his ambition to study under experts. While in York he worked as a portrait painter and studied human anatomy under a surgeon at York County Hospital. One of his earliest surviving works is a set of illustrations for a textbook on midwifery.

In 1754, Stubbs left York to visit Italy to convince himself that nature was superior to art, whether Greek or Roman. In 1756 he rented a farmhouse in Lincolnshire and spent 18 months dissecting horses, assisted by his common-law wife, Mary Spencer. He moved to London in about 1759, and in 1766 published “The Anatomy of the Horse.” The original drawings are now in the collection of the Royal Academy.

Even before his book was published, Stubbs drawings were seen by leading aristocrat patrons who recognized that his work was more accurate than that of earlier horse painters. The 3rd Duke of Richmond commissioned three large pictures from him, and his career was soon secure. By 1763 Stubbs had produced works for several more dukes and other leading aristocrats and was able to buy a house in Marylebone, a fashionable part of London, where he lived for the rest of his life.

His two best known equine paintings are the Marquess of Rockingham’s racehorse “Whistlejacket,” approximately life size, rearing up against a plain background, which is now in the National Gallery in London, and “Gimcrack on Newmarket Heath, with a Trainer, a Stable-Lad, and a Jockey,” which Christie’s in London sold in July 2011 for £22.4 million to an unidentified buyer, an auction record for a Stubbs painting.   

Queen Charlotte commissioned Stubbs to paint a zebra that was in a paddock near the royal menagerie in Saint James’s Park. Other creatures there that caught his attention included a monkey, lions, leopards, a rhinoceros and a dingo.

The steady stream of British aristocrats that were commissioning Stubbs to paint their horses would have equally prized their hounds, sporting dogs and pets. It was therefore probably a natural progression that in the mid-1760s Stubbs turned his attention to dogs. He brought new skills to the genre; his dogs have substance and individuality, and his backgrounds are simple, often incorporating water, distant hills and skies tinged with pink.

With the number of dog portraits he completed and the style of portraiture he developed, one could argue that George Stubbs was the first canine artist.

Spaniels were one of the breeds Stubbs painted most frequently; they had been made popular through the patronage of King Charles II and the Marlborough family, and as well as being companions they were also finding use in the field.

 The three paintings of Spaniels I feature all have American connections. The black Spaniel in a landscape was sold by Bonhams in America in “The Dog Sale” in 2010. Catalogued as “attributed to George Stubbs,” it had been examined by Robert Fountain, co-author with Alfred Gates of “Stubbs Dogs” (1984), and in his opinion it was the work of Stubbs. It had suffered a hard life: It had been reduced in size, undergone substantial restoration and was without a recognized provenance. Nevertheless, it sold for $39,030.  

 

   

The black Spaniel with an extensive white blaze and four white feet, standing on a raised piece of ground with an extensive landscape beyond, was sold by Dreweatts for £30,000 against an estimate of £10,000-15,000. It had been unsold at Sotheby’s New York against a $40,000-60,000 estimate in 2019. Like the previous picture, this one had also suffered a hard life, having been extensively overpainted and with a thick, discolored varnish. It had a provenance to a Major Shuter and to Lord Rootes, British motor manufacturer and founder of the global Rootes Group.

 

 

The third picture given the title “A Black and White Spaniel Pointing” was found in Missouri, where it was put up for sale at a local auction house believed to be simply an old picture of a dog. Experts who noticed it recognized it as something special. Subsequently verified as a genuine Stubbs by experts Alex Kidson and Brian Allen, it was offered for sale by Bonhams in London, selling within estimate to an anonymous buyer for £252,300.

 

 

It appears that the work vanished from records 200 years ago and was likely to have been exhibited at the Royal Academy. It has been suggested that the dog’s owner was possibly the Marquess of Rockingham, a great admirer of Stubbs who had commissioned the picture of Whistlejacket.

How and when the picture arrived in America is a mystery, one suggestion being toward the end of the 19th Century, when, for various reasons, property and art were being disposed of.

 

 

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