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George Stubbs, A.R.A. The Spanish Pointer
作品估价：GBP 1,500,000 - 2,000,000
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拍品名称：
George Stubbs, A.R.A. The Spanish Pointer
拍品描述：
Property from a Distinguished Pennsylvania Collection
George Stubbs, A.R.A.
Liverpool 1724–1806 London
The Spanish Pointer
signed lower right: Geo. Stubbs / pinxit.
oil on canvas
62.2 x 71.8 cm. 24½ x 28¼ in.
Acquired from the artist by Thomas Bradford (fl. 1765–1773), print seller and publisher of Fleet Street, London;
From whose estate purchased by Robert Sayer (1725–1794), map and print seller of Fetter Lane, circa 1773, together with a half share in the copperplate engraving;
By inheritance to his son, James Sayer (recorded by Laurie and Whittle, 1795);
His sale, Richmond Hill, Surrey, on the premises, Christie’s, 24 May 1802, lot 65, to Coote, for £11–6d.;
General Sir Eyre Coote (1762–1823), West Park, Hampshire;
By descent to his son, Eyre Coote (1806–1834), Member of Parliament for Clonmel;
By inheritance to his widow, Elizabeth Rosetta (1808–1858), who later married Rear-Admiral Armar Lowry Corry (1793–1855);
Possibly with Thomas Agnew & Sons, London, circa 1922;
Walter Hutchinson (1887–1950);
His estate sale (‘The second portion of the Important Collection of Sporting Pictures, sold by order of Messrs. Hutchinson & Co. (Publishers) Limited’), London, Christie’s, 14 December 1951, lot 166, to Grantham;
Eben Beers Knowlton (1878–1975), Lakeville, Connecticut, U.S.A.;
By whose Estate sold (‘The Property of the Estate of the late Eben Beers Knowlton of Lakeville, Connecticut’), London, Sotheby’s, 19 July 1972, lot 98, to Roy Miles;
Possibly with Ackerman and Johnson, circa 1984 (remnants of one of the firm’s old labels, verso of frame, only partial);
Private collection, Philadelphia;
Thence by descent.
R. Laurie and J. Whittle, Laurie and Whittle’s Catalogue of New and Interesting Prints, London 1795, p. 1 (the painting recorded in the collection of James Sayer, Richmond Hill);
J. Duchesne, Notice des estampes exposées à la Bibliothèque Royale, formant un aperçu historique des produits de la gravure, Paris, 3rd ed., Paris 1837, p. 85 (where the author records seeing the present painting at West Park in 1824);
J. Duchesne, Description des estampes exposées à la Bibliothèque Royale, Paris 1855, p. 151 (the painting recorded as still at West Park);
W. Gilbey, The Life of George Stubbs R.A. [sic], privately printed 1898, pp. 94 and 222;
W. Shaw Sparrow, British Sporting Artists, London 1922, p. 141, reproduced facing p. 140 (‘reproduced by permission of Messrs. Agnew.’);
J. Wheatley, The first 600 selected pictures. National Gallery of British Sports and Pastimes, founded by Walter Hutchinson, Esquire…, London 1950, p. 30, no. 136;
L. Parris, George Stubbs A.R.A.: ‘Leopard at Play’ and ‘The Spanish Pointer’; an illustrated commentary and notes by Leslie Parris to accompany to limited editions taken from the still-surviving copper plates, London 1974, p. 13;
R. Fountain and A. Gates, Stubbs’ Dogs. The Hounds and Domestic Dogs of the Eighteenth Century as seen through the paintings of George Stubbs, London 1984, pp. 43–44 and 83–84, no. 2B;
C. Lennox-Boyd, R. Dixon and T. Clayton, George Stubbs. The Complete Engraved Works, London 1989, pp. 88–89 (listed as the source of the engraving);
N. Price and R. Fountain, The Engraved Works of George Stubbs 1724–1806, London 2005, p. 21;
J. Egerton, George Stubbs, Painter. Catalogue Raisonné, New Haven and London 2007, pp. 256–57, reproduced in colour;
H. W. Rott (ed.), George Stubbs 1724–1806. Science into Art, exh. cat., Munich, London and New York 2012, pp. 95, 148 and 219 (listed as the version owned by Bradford and the source of the engraving).
Engraved
By William Woollett in line engraving with etching, first published by Thomas Bradford, 1 January 1768.
London, Hutchinson House, National Gallery of Sports and Pastimes, 1948, no. 136.
This seminal painting is the earliest and one of the most familiar of all Stubbs’ depictions of dogs. Painted circa 1766-68, at the height of the artist’s career, it is one of two versions of the subject by the artist, both signed, which are virtually identical except for minor differences in the detail of the landscapes (the other is in the Neue Pinakothek, Munich, having passed in the late 1790s into the collection of the Elector of Bavaria). This version is the one that was purchased from the artist, or perhaps commissioned, by the publisher, Thomas Bradford and served as the basis for the famous print, engraved by William Woollett, that Bradford published in 1768 (fig. 1), and therefore probably the prime. The title The Spanish Pointer, reflects the fact that, as Thomas Pennant had noted in his British Zoology of that same year, ‘the pointer… is a dog of foreign extraction, unknown to our ancestors’. Highly prized by sportsmen for their ability to locate and indicate the presence of game, particularly the partridge, pointers were first imported to England from the Continent at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Stubbs’ faithful image captures the physiognomy of this now extinct ancestor of the breed which, through selective crossing with native types of dogs, would gradually evolve into the lighter, more broken coated pointer we know today.
The 1760s was a prolific and formative decade in Stubbs’ career, in which he produced many of the paintings for which he is most famous; including Whistlejacket (The National Gallery, London; fig. 2), painted in 1762 for Lord Rockingham; The Zebra (Yale Centre for British Art, New Haven), of the following year; and his Mares and Foals series, primarily painted between 1765 and 1769 (examples of which include those at Tate Britain and in the Grosvenor Collection). Indeed 1766, the year this painting is thought to have been executed, was of particular importance for the artist. It was in this year that The Anatomy of the Horse, a project that had occupied him for much of the previous decade, was finally published, catapulting him to fame and confirming his position as the greatest animal painter of the eighteenth century.
Woollett’s print, published at the beginning of 1768, proved incredibly popular and significantly promoted the painting’s fame. As such, even though it has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted and has rarely appeared at auction, Stubbs' Spanish Pointer is one of the most celebrated and widely recognisable of all his works. Unlike the many commissioned portraits of personal pets that the artist produced for his patrons later in his career, the dog here is more an archetype, akin to his depictions of exotic animals such as The Zebra and The Kangaroo (National Maritime Museum, Greenwich), or his celebrated depictions of big cats, like The Cheetah (Manchester Art Gallery) or his rumbunctious Tygers at Play (Sotheby’s, London, 9 July 2014, lot 22; fig. 3). Preserved in exceptionally good condition, and with a distinguished provenance, The Spanish Pointer is a masterpiece of the artist’s early maturity and an important work within his œuvre.
George Stubbs’ Spanish Pointer
The dog has long been man’s best friend, but the eighteenth century saw a significant rise in its importance and status. This, in large part, was due to the growing popularity of field sports, and in particular shooting. With the agricultural revolution that had been gathering pace since the beginning of the century, the enclosure and improvement of increasingly large tracts of land, and the evolution of the shotgun, which enabled the sportsman to accurately shoot game in flight (or ‘on the wing’), shooting became an increasingly popular pastime among the aristocracy and landed gentry in the second half of the eighteenth century. Dogs provided an essential element of the sport. As with the development of the Thoroughbred racehorse, which Stubbs did so much to document, so too the cross-breeding of dogs to produce particular characteristics and traits, suitable to different styles and types of shooting, became a passionate concern for the dedicated sportsman. Over the course of the artist’s lifetime, the development and refinement of breeds such as the pointer and the spaniel gained increasing momentum and his patrons, as well as the sporting public more broadly, were keen to celebrate this, just as they were their champion racehorses. As the poet laureate, Henry James Pye (1745–1813), noted ‘no man can be of consequence without spending a large portion of his time in the country’. A gentleman, therefore, was expected to show an interest in country pursuits and have to hand the necessary dogs for their sport of choice. As such, within the socio-political philosophy of Georgian England, the right dog was an indicator of moral virtue. Stubbs’ representation of the dog builds on the seventeenth-century Dutch tradition of depicting animals in a realistic manner, as exemplified in work of Paulus Potter and others – a genre that was first brought to England by artists like Otto Hoynck (fig. 4). His genius was to marry this with the British tradition of Sporting Art, established by Francis Barlow and John Wootton in the first half of the eighteenth century.
The history of the pointer as a breed is much debated, but the first records indicate that it may have originated in fifteenth-century Italy; and from there appears to have been taken to France and Spain, where it evolved into two distinct types. It is commonly held that it was the Spanish variety that was first introduced to England in the early 18th century, either by Portuguese merchants or British officers returning from the War of Spanish Succession, which ended with the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. The dog is not mentioned in the sporting literature before then, while references become increasingly numerous after it. Stubbs’ painting captures the physiognomy of this now extinct progenitor of the breed; a medium sized muscular dog, larger than the English Pointer that would be developed from it in the early 19th century, prominent occipital bones in the head, wide nostrils and a blunt nose, with a concave muzzle. These dogs were prized among sportsmen for their obedience, quartering skill and ability to indicate the presence of game, particularly partridges. When locating game, they would stand rigid, muzzle stretched forward, usually with one paw raised, precisely in the attitude Stubbs depicts here. The dog is set against a backdrop of enclosed fields and distant hills characteristic of the artist’s naturalistic landscapes. The alert animal concentrates all its powers on the invisible quarry, every line of its rigid body frozen in motion with a pent-up tension that will be instantly recognisable to anyone who has watched such dogs work.
The popularity of Stubbs’ Spanish Pointer is indicated by the large number of versions and copies of the image that were disseminated at the time. Not only did he produce more than one version of the painting and use it as the basis for many of his later depictions of dogs, such as his Portrait of Lord Clermont’s pointer, Phillis (Leeds Museums and Galleries), which he exhibited at the Society of Artists in 1773, but a number of painted copies exist and artists such as Philip Reinagle and Richard Cosway copied the pose in works of their own. Woollett’s engraving of The Spanish Pointer was one of his most successful prints, published in a number of editions, and the image was used to ornament both Pixton and Spode porcelain, as well as serving as the source for many engravings on the mounts of sporting guns. Consequently, it is one of the most famous and widely known of all Stubbs’ paintings, the enduring appeal of which was demonstrated in the 1970s, when the original copper plate was discovered, along with that for Tygers at Play, in the stock of the printers Thomas Ross & Sons and a limited edition of 225 impressions were printed for Observer Art. The copper plate itself was later acquired by the Tate Gallery.
The Spanish Pointer: The Bradford and Munich Versions
The early provenance of this painting has hitherto been shrouded in uncertainty in the literature and its ownership confused with that of the Munich version. The latter, better known owing to its presence in a major public collection, has long been thought to be the first version of the composition, on the basis that it is signed.1 This version, however, is also signed, a fact that has been overlooked in previous descriptions of the painting (though it was recorded last time it was catalogued for auction at Sotheby’s in 1972). Egerton, in her catalogue raisonné of Stubbs’ work, listed the Munich painting as the source of Wollett’s engraving, and therefore the one owned by, and possibly painted for the publisher Thomas Bradford, on the basis that it corresponds closely to the print. This is clearly an error, however, and other scholars have proposed the present work as the prototype for the engraving (including the compilers of the 2012 Munich exhibition). Whilst the depiction of the dog itself is almost identical in both versions, there are a number of distinct differences in the landscape backgrounds of the two paintings. The most obvious of these include a large broad-leaved dock seen between the legs of the dog in the present painting, but which is absent in the Munich picture, as well as differences in the shape of the trees on the right and in the details of foreground rocks, grasses and other foliage. Woollett’s print closely follows the landscape details found in this version of the painting, not those of the Munich version.
The painting now in the Neue Pinakothek, in Munich, is recorded in the collection of Maximilian Joseph, Duke of Zweibrücken-Birkenfeld, Elector of Bavaria (1756–1825) as early as 1799. From there it entered the Bavarian State Collection and later the Neue Pinakothek, after it opened in 1853. However, as Tim Clayton pointed out, in the turmoil of the French invasion of the Rhineland in 1794 and of Bavaria in 1796, the Elector is unlikely to have had either the leisure, or the money to dsevote to his collection, and it is probable that the painting was obtained at an earlier date.
The published edition of Woollett’s print, released on 1 January 1768, included an engraved inscription that reads ‘G. Stubbs pinxit. W. Woollett Sculpt./ The SPANISH POINTER./ Engraved after an Original Picture of Mr. George Stubbs, in the Possession of Mr. Bradford./ Publish’d by T. Bradford, No. 132 Fleet Street, Jany. 1st. 1768, as the Act directs.’ It was the first of five line engravings by William Woollett after paintings by Stubbs, published by Thomas Bradford (fl. 1765–1773), all on shooting subjects and all in Bradford’s possession at the time of engraving (the other four being the famous series of Shooting scenes now in the Mellon Collection, Yale Centre for British Art; fig. 5).2 A rival of John Boydell, with whom he shared the practice of buying or commissioning paintings in order to sell prints of them, Bradford was one of the most enterprising print sellers and publishers on Fleet Street. The painting of The Spanish Pointer remained in his collection until his death in 1773, when it passed to another print seller, Robert Sayer (1725–1794), who had a particular specialism in Stubbs’ works and acquired many of the plates from Bradford’s by then defunct business. The painting was recorded in the collection of his son, James Sayer, in 1795, but its subsequent history has, until now, been difficult to trace (fig. 6).3
It has long been known that a version of the painting that was in the collection of Sir Eyre Coote (1762–1823), at West Park in Hampshire (fig. 7), had a stronger claim to be the original from which Woollett’s engraving was taken. This was first noted by the French print scholar Jean Duchesne, who located the painting there when visiting England in 1824, and in a publication of 1855 recorded it as remaining at the house in the collection of Sir Eyre’s widowed daughter-in-law, Mrs Lowry Corry (see Literature). Where the West Park painting came from, however, has until now been untraced. Recent research in the Getty Provenance Index, however, has uncovered the sale of the contents of James Sayer’s house on Richmond Hill, held on the premises by Christie’s on 24 May 1802, in which the version of Stubbs’ Spanish Pointer that had belonged to his father, and before him Thomas Bradford, is listed as lot 65 (‘G. Stubbs – The Pointer Dog, engraved by Woollet [sic]’). In an annotated copy of the catalogue held in the archives of the Frick Art Reference Library the buyer of this painting is listed as ‘Coote’, thus confirming that the painting Duchesne saw in the Coote collection at West Park was indeed the painting that had once belonged to Bradford, engraved by Woollett, and not the version in Munich which was already in Germany by 1799, three years before the sale of Sayer’s estate.
By the early twentieth-century the painting had entered the distinguished collection of Walter Hutchinson, founder of the famous publishing company Hutchinson & Co. Hutchinson had many diverse business interests including owning ten farms, a cosmetics manufacturing company, and a baked meat factory. A noted fan of the Turf, his coltHappy Landingfinished third in the 1944 Derby. He was also a notable collector of fine art and amassed a remarkable collection that must surely rank as one of the most important collections of sporting pictures in England. It included no fewer than twelve works by Stubbs, chief among them The Spanish Pointer andGimcrack on Newmarket Heath (London, Christie’s, 5 July 2011, lot 12). He also owned seventeen paintings by Sir Alfred Munnings; as well as works by Thomas Gainsborough, Johann Zoffany, Ben Marshall, Sir Edwin Landseer, Sawrey Gilpin, John Frederick Herring and John Ferneley; William Hogarth’s A House of Cards (National Museum Cardiff); and Constable’s Stratford Mill, known as ‘The Young Waltonians’ (National Gallery, London). His collection extended to over 3,000 pictures and, the year before his death, he opened the National Gallery of British Sports and Pastimes in London, exhibiting the collection to the public. The project was short-lived, however, and closed the year after Hutchinson’s passing. The collection was dispersed over two sales, held at Christie’s in 1951, following which The Spanish Pointer passed into a private collection in the United States of America, before being offered at auction again, at Sotheby’s in London, in 1972, which is the last time it was seen in public.
George Stubbs: The Leading Animal Painter of the eighteenth century
Born in Liverpool in 1724, the son of a currier, Stubbs was largely self-taught as an artist but, unusually, had studied anatomy at York County Hospital in 1740s, under the distinguished surgeon Dr Charles Atkinson. Later, at Horkstow, in Lincolnshire, he spent the two years, between 1756 and 1758, engaged in studying and dissecting horses in preparation for the publication of his magnum opus, a work the likes of which had not been seen in Europe since Carlo Ruini’s Dell’anotomia et dell’infirmità del cavallo of 1598. This unprecedented work cast Stubbs at the forefront of both science and art in his understanding and knowledge of equine anatomy and propelled him into the limelight as the leading authority on the depiction of the horse. However, it also gave him the training and ability to dissect and study many other animals over the course of his career, and his knowledge and understanding of the physical make-up of mammals of all kinds was unparalleled by any artist of his generation.
Arriving in London in the early 1760s he quickly caught the attention of a close-knit group of noblemen and members of the Jockey Club; including Lord Rockingham; Lord Grosvenor; and the Dukes of Grafton and Portland – all leading champions of the Turf – whose patronage would dominate Stubbs’s work for the next ten years. His inclusion in Étienne Falconet’s 1769 list of the twelve most reputed artists in London, however, is testament to the broader reputation he had achieved by the end of his first decade in the capital. By 1765 he had already been made a Fellow of the Society of Artists of Great Britain, then the leading exhibiting society for artists in the country. Swiftly elected one of its directors, he went on to serve as Treasurer from 1768 and President of the Society in 1772 and 1773; and he would remain the leading animal painter in Britain throughout his career.
Stubbs was not a prolific artist, however. He finished less than four hundred paintings over his entire career.By contrast, his contemporary, Sir Joshua Reynolds, painted well over two thousand over a similar period of production, and George Romney only slightly less. Although a significant body of his work was included in his studio sale in 1809, important works by the artist have only rarely appeared on the art market in the ensuing two centuries. Even fewer as celebrated and significant as this.
1 Neue Pinakothek, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Munich, inv. no. 1602; oil on canvas, 60.5 x 69.5 cm.
2 Egerton 2007, p. 84. For the series of four Shooting scenes, see Egerton 2007, nos 82–85. These passed shortly afterwards to William Wildman, a great supporter and friend of Stubbs, who may have commissioned them in partnership with Bradford.
3 Lennox-Boyd, et. al, 1989, p. 89.
George Stubbs, A.R.A.
Liverpool 1724–1806 London
The Spanish Pointer
signed lower right: Geo. Stubbs / pinxit.
oil on canvas
62.2 x 71.8 cm. 24½ x 28¼ in.
Acquired from the artist by Thomas Bradford (fl. 1765–1773), print seller and publisher of Fleet Street, London;
From whose estate purchased by Robert Sayer (1725–1794), map and print seller of Fetter Lane, circa 1773, together with a half share in the copperplate engraving;
By inheritance to his son, James Sayer (recorded by Laurie and Whittle, 1795);
His sale, Richmond Hill, Surrey, on the premises, Christie’s, 24 May 1802, lot 65, to Coote, for £11–6d.;
General Sir Eyre Coote (1762–1823), West Park, Hampshire;
By descent to his son, Eyre Coote (1806–1834), Member of Parliament for Clonmel;
By inheritance to his widow, Elizabeth Rosetta (1808–1858), who later married Rear-Admiral Armar Lowry Corry (1793–1855);
Possibly with Thomas Agnew & Sons, London, circa 1922;
Walter Hutchinson (1887–1950);
His estate sale (‘The second portion of the Important Collection of Sporting Pictures, sold by order of Messrs. Hutchinson & Co. (Publishers) Limited’), London, Christie’s, 14 December 1951, lot 166, to Grantham;
Eben Beers Knowlton (1878–1975), Lakeville, Connecticut, U.S.A.;
By whose Estate sold (‘The Property of the Estate of the late Eben Beers Knowlton of Lakeville, Connecticut’), London, Sotheby’s, 19 July 1972, lot 98, to Roy Miles;
Possibly with Ackerman and Johnson, circa 1984 (remnants of one of the firm’s old labels, verso of frame, only partial);
Private collection, Philadelphia;
Thence by descent.
R. Laurie and J. Whittle, Laurie and Whittle’s Catalogue of New and Interesting Prints, London 1795, p. 1 (the painting recorded in the collection of James Sayer, Richmond Hill);
J. Duchesne, Notice des estampes exposées à la Bibliothèque Royale, formant un aperçu historique des produits de la gravure, Paris, 3rd ed., Paris 1837, p. 85 (where the author records seeing the present painting at West Park in 1824);
J. Duchesne, Description des estampes exposées à la Bibliothèque Royale, Paris 1855, p. 151 (the painting recorded as still at West Park);
W. Gilbey, The Life of George Stubbs R.A. [sic], privately printed 1898, pp. 94 and 222;
W. Shaw Sparrow, British Sporting Artists, London 1922, p. 141, reproduced facing p. 140 (‘reproduced by permission of Messrs. Agnew.’);
J. Wheatley, The first 600 selected pictures. National Gallery of British Sports and Pastimes, founded by Walter Hutchinson, Esquire…, London 1950, p. 30, no. 136;
L. Parris, George Stubbs A.R.A.: ‘Leopard at Play’ and ‘The Spanish Pointer’; an illustrated commentary and notes by Leslie Parris to accompany to limited editions taken from the still-surviving copper plates, London 1974, p. 13;
R. Fountain and A. Gates, Stubbs’ Dogs. The Hounds and Domestic Dogs of the Eighteenth Century as seen through the paintings of George Stubbs, London 1984, pp. 43–44 and 83–84, no. 2B;
C. Lennox-Boyd, R. Dixon and T. Clayton, George Stubbs. The Complete Engraved Works, London 1989, pp. 88–89 (listed as the source of the engraving);
N. Price and R. Fountain, The Engraved Works of George Stubbs 1724–1806, London 2005, p. 21;
J. Egerton, George Stubbs, Painter. Catalogue Raisonné, New Haven and London 2007, pp. 256–57, reproduced in colour;
H. W. Rott (ed.), George Stubbs 1724–1806. Science into Art, exh. cat., Munich, London and New York 2012, pp. 95, 148 and 219 (listed as the version owned by Bradford and the source of the engraving).
Engraved
By William Woollett in line engraving with etching, first published by Thomas Bradford, 1 January 1768.
London, Hutchinson House, National Gallery of Sports and Pastimes, 1948, no. 136.
This seminal painting is the earliest and one of the most familiar of all Stubbs’ depictions of dogs. Painted circa 1766-68, at the height of the artist’s career, it is one of two versions of the subject by the artist, both signed, which are virtually identical except for minor differences in the detail of the landscapes (the other is in the Neue Pinakothek, Munich, having passed in the late 1790s into the collection of the Elector of Bavaria). This version is the one that was purchased from the artist, or perhaps commissioned, by the publisher, Thomas Bradford and served as the basis for the famous print, engraved by William Woollett, that Bradford published in 1768 (fig. 1), and therefore probably the prime. The title The Spanish Pointer, reflects the fact that, as Thomas Pennant had noted in his British Zoology of that same year, ‘the pointer… is a dog of foreign extraction, unknown to our ancestors’. Highly prized by sportsmen for their ability to locate and indicate the presence of game, particularly the partridge, pointers were first imported to England from the Continent at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Stubbs’ faithful image captures the physiognomy of this now extinct ancestor of the breed which, through selective crossing with native types of dogs, would gradually evolve into the lighter, more broken coated pointer we know today.
The 1760s was a prolific and formative decade in Stubbs’ career, in which he produced many of the paintings for which he is most famous; including Whistlejacket (The National Gallery, London; fig. 2), painted in 1762 for Lord Rockingham; The Zebra (Yale Centre for British Art, New Haven), of the following year; and his Mares and Foals series, primarily painted between 1765 and 1769 (examples of which include those at Tate Britain and in the Grosvenor Collection). Indeed 1766, the year this painting is thought to have been executed, was of particular importance for the artist. It was in this year that The Anatomy of the Horse, a project that had occupied him for much of the previous decade, was finally published, catapulting him to fame and confirming his position as the greatest animal painter of the eighteenth century.
Woollett’s print, published at the beginning of 1768, proved incredibly popular and significantly promoted the painting’s fame. As such, even though it has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted and has rarely appeared at auction, Stubbs' Spanish Pointer is one of the most celebrated and widely recognisable of all his works. Unlike the many commissioned portraits of personal pets that the artist produced for his patrons later in his career, the dog here is more an archetype, akin to his depictions of exotic animals such as The Zebra and The Kangaroo (National Maritime Museum, Greenwich), or his celebrated depictions of big cats, like The Cheetah (Manchester Art Gallery) or his rumbunctious Tygers at Play (Sotheby’s, London, 9 July 2014, lot 22; fig. 3). Preserved in exceptionally good condition, and with a distinguished provenance, The Spanish Pointer is a masterpiece of the artist’s early maturity and an important work within his œuvre.
George Stubbs’ Spanish Pointer
The dog has long been man’s best friend, but the eighteenth century saw a significant rise in its importance and status. This, in large part, was due to the growing popularity of field sports, and in particular shooting. With the agricultural revolution that had been gathering pace since the beginning of the century, the enclosure and improvement of increasingly large tracts of land, and the evolution of the shotgun, which enabled the sportsman to accurately shoot game in flight (or ‘on the wing’), shooting became an increasingly popular pastime among the aristocracy and landed gentry in the second half of the eighteenth century. Dogs provided an essential element of the sport. As with the development of the Thoroughbred racehorse, which Stubbs did so much to document, so too the cross-breeding of dogs to produce particular characteristics and traits, suitable to different styles and types of shooting, became a passionate concern for the dedicated sportsman. Over the course of the artist’s lifetime, the development and refinement of breeds such as the pointer and the spaniel gained increasing momentum and his patrons, as well as the sporting public more broadly, were keen to celebrate this, just as they were their champion racehorses. As the poet laureate, Henry James Pye (1745–1813), noted ‘no man can be of consequence without spending a large portion of his time in the country’. A gentleman, therefore, was expected to show an interest in country pursuits and have to hand the necessary dogs for their sport of choice. As such, within the socio-political philosophy of Georgian England, the right dog was an indicator of moral virtue. Stubbs’ representation of the dog builds on the seventeenth-century Dutch tradition of depicting animals in a realistic manner, as exemplified in work of Paulus Potter and others – a genre that was first brought to England by artists like Otto Hoynck (fig. 4). His genius was to marry this with the British tradition of Sporting Art, established by Francis Barlow and John Wootton in the first half of the eighteenth century.
The history of the pointer as a breed is much debated, but the first records indicate that it may have originated in fifteenth-century Italy; and from there appears to have been taken to France and Spain, where it evolved into two distinct types. It is commonly held that it was the Spanish variety that was first introduced to England in the early 18th century, either by Portuguese merchants or British officers returning from the War of Spanish Succession, which ended with the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. The dog is not mentioned in the sporting literature before then, while references become increasingly numerous after it. Stubbs’ painting captures the physiognomy of this now extinct progenitor of the breed; a medium sized muscular dog, larger than the English Pointer that would be developed from it in the early 19th century, prominent occipital bones in the head, wide nostrils and a blunt nose, with a concave muzzle. These dogs were prized among sportsmen for their obedience, quartering skill and ability to indicate the presence of game, particularly partridges. When locating game, they would stand rigid, muzzle stretched forward, usually with one paw raised, precisely in the attitude Stubbs depicts here. The dog is set against a backdrop of enclosed fields and distant hills characteristic of the artist’s naturalistic landscapes. The alert animal concentrates all its powers on the invisible quarry, every line of its rigid body frozen in motion with a pent-up tension that will be instantly recognisable to anyone who has watched such dogs work.
The popularity of Stubbs’ Spanish Pointer is indicated by the large number of versions and copies of the image that were disseminated at the time. Not only did he produce more than one version of the painting and use it as the basis for many of his later depictions of dogs, such as his Portrait of Lord Clermont’s pointer, Phillis (Leeds Museums and Galleries), which he exhibited at the Society of Artists in 1773, but a number of painted copies exist and artists such as Philip Reinagle and Richard Cosway copied the pose in works of their own. Woollett’s engraving of The Spanish Pointer was one of his most successful prints, published in a number of editions, and the image was used to ornament both Pixton and Spode porcelain, as well as serving as the source for many engravings on the mounts of sporting guns. Consequently, it is one of the most famous and widely known of all Stubbs’ paintings, the enduring appeal of which was demonstrated in the 1970s, when the original copper plate was discovered, along with that for Tygers at Play, in the stock of the printers Thomas Ross & Sons and a limited edition of 225 impressions were printed for Observer Art. The copper plate itself was later acquired by the Tate Gallery.
The Spanish Pointer: The Bradford and Munich Versions
The early provenance of this painting has hitherto been shrouded in uncertainty in the literature and its ownership confused with that of the Munich version. The latter, better known owing to its presence in a major public collection, has long been thought to be the first version of the composition, on the basis that it is signed.1 This version, however, is also signed, a fact that has been overlooked in previous descriptions of the painting (though it was recorded last time it was catalogued for auction at Sotheby’s in 1972). Egerton, in her catalogue raisonné of Stubbs’ work, listed the Munich painting as the source of Wollett’s engraving, and therefore the one owned by, and possibly painted for the publisher Thomas Bradford, on the basis that it corresponds closely to the print. This is clearly an error, however, and other scholars have proposed the present work as the prototype for the engraving (including the compilers of the 2012 Munich exhibition). Whilst the depiction of the dog itself is almost identical in both versions, there are a number of distinct differences in the landscape backgrounds of the two paintings. The most obvious of these include a large broad-leaved dock seen between the legs of the dog in the present painting, but which is absent in the Munich picture, as well as differences in the shape of the trees on the right and in the details of foreground rocks, grasses and other foliage. Woollett’s print closely follows the landscape details found in this version of the painting, not those of the Munich version.
The painting now in the Neue Pinakothek, in Munich, is recorded in the collection of Maximilian Joseph, Duke of Zweibrücken-Birkenfeld, Elector of Bavaria (1756–1825) as early as 1799. From there it entered the Bavarian State Collection and later the Neue Pinakothek, after it opened in 1853. However, as Tim Clayton pointed out, in the turmoil of the French invasion of the Rhineland in 1794 and of Bavaria in 1796, the Elector is unlikely to have had either the leisure, or the money to dsevote to his collection, and it is probable that the painting was obtained at an earlier date.
The published edition of Woollett’s print, released on 1 January 1768, included an engraved inscription that reads ‘G. Stubbs pinxit. W. Woollett Sculpt./ The SPANISH POINTER./ Engraved after an Original Picture of Mr. George Stubbs, in the Possession of Mr. Bradford./ Publish’d by T. Bradford, No. 132 Fleet Street, Jany. 1st. 1768, as the Act directs.’ It was the first of five line engravings by William Woollett after paintings by Stubbs, published by Thomas Bradford (fl. 1765–1773), all on shooting subjects and all in Bradford’s possession at the time of engraving (the other four being the famous series of Shooting scenes now in the Mellon Collection, Yale Centre for British Art; fig. 5).2 A rival of John Boydell, with whom he shared the practice of buying or commissioning paintings in order to sell prints of them, Bradford was one of the most enterprising print sellers and publishers on Fleet Street. The painting of The Spanish Pointer remained in his collection until his death in 1773, when it passed to another print seller, Robert Sayer (1725–1794), who had a particular specialism in Stubbs’ works and acquired many of the plates from Bradford’s by then defunct business. The painting was recorded in the collection of his son, James Sayer, in 1795, but its subsequent history has, until now, been difficult to trace (fig. 6).3
It has long been known that a version of the painting that was in the collection of Sir Eyre Coote (1762–1823), at West Park in Hampshire (fig. 7), had a stronger claim to be the original from which Woollett’s engraving was taken. This was first noted by the French print scholar Jean Duchesne, who located the painting there when visiting England in 1824, and in a publication of 1855 recorded it as remaining at the house in the collection of Sir Eyre’s widowed daughter-in-law, Mrs Lowry Corry (see Literature). Where the West Park painting came from, however, has until now been untraced. Recent research in the Getty Provenance Index, however, has uncovered the sale of the contents of James Sayer’s house on Richmond Hill, held on the premises by Christie’s on 24 May 1802, in which the version of Stubbs’ Spanish Pointer that had belonged to his father, and before him Thomas Bradford, is listed as lot 65 (‘G. Stubbs – The Pointer Dog, engraved by Woollet [sic]’). In an annotated copy of the catalogue held in the archives of the Frick Art Reference Library the buyer of this painting is listed as ‘Coote’, thus confirming that the painting Duchesne saw in the Coote collection at West Park was indeed the painting that had once belonged to Bradford, engraved by Woollett, and not the version in Munich which was already in Germany by 1799, three years before the sale of Sayer’s estate.
By the early twentieth-century the painting had entered the distinguished collection of Walter Hutchinson, founder of the famous publishing company Hutchinson & Co. Hutchinson had many diverse business interests including owning ten farms, a cosmetics manufacturing company, and a baked meat factory. A noted fan of the Turf, his coltHappy Landingfinished third in the 1944 Derby. He was also a notable collector of fine art and amassed a remarkable collection that must surely rank as one of the most important collections of sporting pictures in England. It included no fewer than twelve works by Stubbs, chief among them The Spanish Pointer andGimcrack on Newmarket Heath (London, Christie’s, 5 July 2011, lot 12). He also owned seventeen paintings by Sir Alfred Munnings; as well as works by Thomas Gainsborough, Johann Zoffany, Ben Marshall, Sir Edwin Landseer, Sawrey Gilpin, John Frederick Herring and John Ferneley; William Hogarth’s A House of Cards (National Museum Cardiff); and Constable’s Stratford Mill, known as ‘The Young Waltonians’ (National Gallery, London). His collection extended to over 3,000 pictures and, the year before his death, he opened the National Gallery of British Sports and Pastimes in London, exhibiting the collection to the public. The project was short-lived, however, and closed the year after Hutchinson’s passing. The collection was dispersed over two sales, held at Christie’s in 1951, following which The Spanish Pointer passed into a private collection in the United States of America, before being offered at auction again, at Sotheby’s in London, in 1972, which is the last time it was seen in public.
George Stubbs: The Leading Animal Painter of the eighteenth century
Born in Liverpool in 1724, the son of a currier, Stubbs was largely self-taught as an artist but, unusually, had studied anatomy at York County Hospital in 1740s, under the distinguished surgeon Dr Charles Atkinson. Later, at Horkstow, in Lincolnshire, he spent the two years, between 1756 and 1758, engaged in studying and dissecting horses in preparation for the publication of his magnum opus, a work the likes of which had not been seen in Europe since Carlo Ruini’s Dell’anotomia et dell’infirmità del cavallo of 1598. This unprecedented work cast Stubbs at the forefront of both science and art in his understanding and knowledge of equine anatomy and propelled him into the limelight as the leading authority on the depiction of the horse. However, it also gave him the training and ability to dissect and study many other animals over the course of his career, and his knowledge and understanding of the physical make-up of mammals of all kinds was unparalleled by any artist of his generation.
Arriving in London in the early 1760s he quickly caught the attention of a close-knit group of noblemen and members of the Jockey Club; including Lord Rockingham; Lord Grosvenor; and the Dukes of Grafton and Portland – all leading champions of the Turf – whose patronage would dominate Stubbs’s work for the next ten years. His inclusion in Étienne Falconet’s 1769 list of the twelve most reputed artists in London, however, is testament to the broader reputation he had achieved by the end of his first decade in the capital. By 1765 he had already been made a Fellow of the Society of Artists of Great Britain, then the leading exhibiting society for artists in the country. Swiftly elected one of its directors, he went on to serve as Treasurer from 1768 and President of the Society in 1772 and 1773; and he would remain the leading animal painter in Britain throughout his career.
Stubbs was not a prolific artist, however. He finished less than four hundred paintings over his entire career.By contrast, his contemporary, Sir Joshua Reynolds, painted well over two thousand over a similar period of production, and George Romney only slightly less. Although a significant body of his work was included in his studio sale in 1809, important works by the artist have only rarely appeared on the art market in the ensuing two centuries. Even fewer as celebrated and significant as this.
1 Neue Pinakothek, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Munich, inv. no. 1602; oil on canvas, 60.5 x 69.5 cm.
2 Egerton 2007, p. 84. For the series of four Shooting scenes, see Egerton 2007, nos 82–85. These passed shortly afterwards to William Wildman, a great supporter and friend of Stubbs, who may have commissioned them in partnership with Bradford.
3 Lennox-Boyd, et. al, 1989, p. 89.