A HISTORY OF MY FAVOURITE ANIMAL PAINTERS
I have taken inspiration from some of the great painters of horses and other animals.
Many of these paintings can be viewed right here in Glasgow and it is wonderful to look at the techniques up close.
Some of the artists who have inspired me include animal artists found in the Burrell Collection, Glasgow. These include Degas and Crawhall. I am also a fan of Joseph Farquarson, Landseer, Munnings. Carol Peek and Lucy Kemp-Welch are two fantastic women horse painters who I greatly admire. If you would like to find out a bit more about each of these then please read on. You can also read about my Great Grandfather Alexander Lightbody who made his living as an artist.
Gericault
Theodore Gericault's "Prancing Grey Horse" can be viewed at the Burrell Collection in Glasgow. This wonderful oil sketch is said to be a study for Géricault's painting "An Officer of the Imperial Horse Guards Charging", now in the Louvre.
Landseer
Sir Edwin Henry Landseer
Landseer was an English painter, born in London, the son of the engraver John Landseer. Trained by his father to sketch animals from life, he began exhibiting at the Royal Academy when only 13. He was elected Associate of the Royal Academy in 1826 at only 24 years of age, and full Academician in 1831 when not yet 30. One of my favourites is called "Arab Tent"
He became famous for his pictures of horses, dogs and stags, many of them later engraved by his brother Thomas Landseer. In 1824, Landseer went to Scotland for the first time to visit Sir Walter Scott. Sir Walter wrote "Landseer's dogs were the most magnificent things I ever saw...". Animal portraits, and in particular, paintings and engravings of dogs, were a continuing theme of Landseer's. Many were of sheepdogs.
Two of my favourites are "Collie rescuing a sheep" which shows a collie digging a sheep out of the snow and the very moving picture "The Old Shepherd's Chief Mourner", painted in 1837. It shows a black and tan shepherd's collie, lying with his chest pressed against the side of his dead master's coffin, his chin resting forlornly on the coffin lid that the black and white checked shepherd's plaid is draped across.
Landseer returned to Scotland every year for inspiration, drawing and hunting.
Landseer enjoyed royal patronage, especially in the 1840s when Queen Victoria and Prince Albert also discovered Scotland. He paid his first visit to their home, Balmoral, in 1850 to paint a large group portrait of the Royal Family. He was knighted that year even though the painting was never finished.
In the 1860s he modelled the lions at the base of Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square and these were unveiled in 1867. Landseer died in London on October 1873 and was buried in St Paul’s Cathedral.
Farquarson
Joseph Farquarson, famous for sheep paintings is one of my favourite painters. He painted outdoors on his Finzean Estate in Deeside in Scotland. His images of sheep in the snow have been used on numerous Christmas cards ! For more information :
In addition to his wonderful pastels and sculptures of the human body, Degas painted wonderful impressionistic pastels of horses and jockeys which capture all the tension of a race or the start of a race.
The wonderful picture "Jockeys Sous La Pluie" (Jockeys in the rain)
can be viewed at the Burrell Collection in Glasgow. It is executed in pastels
and shows jockeys gathering at the start of a race in the rain. Degas has captured the tension and excitement at the start of the race. Degas was
fascinated by movement and here he adds a shower of rain to an already restless
image. Degas uses pastel and depicts the rain in long, fine, strokes of blue.
The diagonal lines of these marks are echoed in the hatched strokes he uses to
describe the grass and rain-filled sky. Indeed, Degas’ use of weather and
technique seem to perfectly match the twitching movements of the horses as they
wait for the race to begin.
Though born in Northumbria, Joseph Crawhall is generally classified as a Scottish artist, due to his close association with the group of artists known as the Glasgow Boys, in particular James Guthrie, E.A. Walton and Arthur Melville. Together with the latter two, he is recognised as one of the group's most outstanding watercolourists.
In the 1890s, after his family had moved to London, Crawhall was a regular visitor to the annual fair in the London borough of Barnet and painted the picture Barnet Fair. Here Crawhall captures the colour and atmosphere of this centuries-old event in the paint technique Gouache on Linen. This painting is held at the Burrell Collection in Glasgow..
Throughout the nineteenth century, Tangier, with its walled Medina intersected by narrow streets and dominated by the Kasbah, was perceived by the writers, artists and tourists who dared travel there as a mystical, magical place. Unlike most artist visitors to Tangier, Crawhall was not interested in portraying the social or physical context of the city. Instead he captured and conveyed the characteristics of Tangier's domestic animals, particularly horses, camels and goats.
Crawhall first painted with gouache on linen around 1893. According to family legend he was visiting one of his sisters when he discovered that he had no paper left to work on. He decided to experiment with the brown Holland linen she used for sewing.
Watercolour is transparent. By adding bodycolour or Chinese white you get gouache, which unlike watercolour is opaque. This is sometimes known as poster paint. Painting with gouache on linen is difficult but Crawhall uses it to advantage. Crawhall often uses bright patches of colour to frame and outline forms allowing him to define shapes without having to use strong contouring lines.
Many examples of Crawhall's work can be viewed at http://www.scran.ac.uk/ and typing Crawhall in the Search Box. Examples of his work can also be seen at the Burrell Collection in the south side of Glasgow.
My other favourites include :
Sir Alfred Munnings of course, one of the most wonderful painters of horses,
Carol Peek http://www.carolpeek.com/
and Lucy Kemp-Welch (1869-1958),
Lucy Kemp-Welch was a wonderful painter of horses. She was famous for illustrating Black Beauty by Anna Sewell. I can find very few examples of her work on the internet but a few can be viewed at http://www.busheymuseum.org/lk-w.php and http://store.encore-editions.com/artist/lucywelch.html and http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ArtistWorks?cgroupid=999999961&artistid=1397&page=1. The last shows examples of gun carriages - she even painted battle scenes. My grandfather James Hastings Lightbody was a horseman in the war and accompanied the gun carriages, although as an officer he had his own horse.
Alexander Lightbody (1855-1905)
My Great Grandfather Alexander Lightbody made his living from painting. His studio was in Hamilton. He lived in Braidwood, Carluke until the family moved to Caird Drive, Glasgow around 1900. He founded the Lanark Art Club in 1894. He exhibited in the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool in 1891 among many other places.
He created many wonderful scenes of the Lanarkshire countryside. Here is a photograph of a scene of a haywane which he painted in oils. It is wonderful to see this snippet of life around the turn of the century, with Clydesdale horses working in Lanarkshire, the source of the River Clyde.
From trying to gather together snippets of family history, we believe he possibly had only one arm and it is also possible that this happened in a mining accident as one of his paintings depicts an accident in a coal mine. I would be very interested to hear from anyone who can add to this history or who can send me a copy of his paintings. Unfortunately we believe he just initialed his paintings so it is therefore pretty hard to track them down. To see more of Alexander Lightbody's paintings please click here.
In addition my Uncle was a wonderful sculptor and drawer of horses - more to
follow !
© Jennifer Wilson 2006