Sawrey Gilpin RA (1733-1807)

Sawrey Gilpin RA (1733-1807)

Bay Hunter

in a wooded landscape

signed and dated lower right 1772

oil on canvas, 63cm x 76cm

Christie’s London, 25^th June, 1948

The landscape is probably by the Irish painter George Barret the Elder (1730-1784), with whom Gilpin often collaborated. Barret moved to London in 1762 and the artists were working together increasingly in the 1770s, when this picture was painted. A fine example of their successful partnership is ‘Brood mares and colts in a landscape’ in the collection of the Tate Gallery.

Gilpin was born in 1733 in the Manor of Scaleby Castle, Cumberland, which remained the family home for four generations, interrupted only by the Scottish Rebellion of 1745, when they were compelled to seek safety in Whitehaven.

He had some tuition from his father, an amateur artist, before being apprenticed in 1749 to Samuel Scott in London. Over a period of nine years he was Scott’s assistant and honed his skills by sketching the horses and carts that crowded Covent Garden Market. These brought him to the notice of William, Duke of Cumberland, who became a patron and at whose stud Gilpin was able to study the throughbreds and generally develop his knowledge of horses. He exhibited his first painting at the Society of Artists in 1762 and in the following years exhibited there a number of works commissioned by the Duke. From 1768, the year of its foundation, he showed pictures at the Royal Academy every year until his death, all of animals but of horses and sporting dogs in particular, becoming a full member in 1795. Prominent among his other patrons was the brewer Samuel Whitbread.

Gilpin collaborated with a number of artists, besides Barret, among them Turner, Zoffany, Romney and Cosway, and his skills were in constant demand. However, at a time when horse painting was not highly regarded, history painting being seen as the proper measure of artistic achievement – Cunningham in Pilkington’s Dictionary of 1852, refers to it as ‘the meaner employment of horse portrait painting’ – both he and George Stubbs did not receive the acclaim their talents deserved.

After the incomparable Stubbs Gilpin is regarded as the finest horse painter of his time and, indeed, the critic John Williams wrote in The Morning Herald in 1794 ‘Mr Gilpin is inferior to Mr Stubbs in anatomical knowledge but superior to him in grace and genius’. The latter assertion is of course open to debate but there is no doubt that Gilpin in his best paintings combined a good understanding of equine anatomy with a naturalism and an ability to depict the animal’s beauty and elegance of movement, even to convey its emotions.

The painting offered here illustrates these qualities admirably and dates from a period when Gilpin’s work was arguably at its height.