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Overview

Benjamin Marshall exhibited this portrait of J. G. Shaddick at the Royal Academy in 1806. Very little is known about Shaddick besides the fact that he embarked on a lengthy hunting tour in Britain the year the painting was exhibited. In fact, Marshall’s portrait may commemorate this event. Standing in a field after a successful hunt, Shaddick holds his trophy—a male pheasant—in triumph, surrounded by his shooting horse and two hunting dogs. Marshall was a well known painter of both portraits and sporting subjects, with such prestigious patrons as the Prince of Wales. Like his fellow artist George Stubbs, Marshall studied equine anatomy to achieve a greater sense of realism in his paintings.

Provenance

Possibly Mr. Payne, Walton-on-Thames.[1] (sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 28 February 1891, no. 78); (Vokins). E.M. Denny, London; (his estate sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, 31 March 1906, no. 41); (Vokins).[2] Viscount Enfield. Earl of Stratford, Wrotham Park, Barnet, Hertfordshire. A.S. Cochran, London;[3] (his sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 13 February 1920, no. 144); Basil Lewis Dighton, Esq. [d. 1930], London, until at least 1922.[4] Arthur S. Vernay, London, by 1927 until at least 1938.[5] C. Frederick C. Stout, Ardmore, Pennsylvania, by 1941.[6] (M. Knoedler & Co., Inc., New York), in 1965.[7] Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, Upperville, Virginia; bequest 1999 to NGA.

[1] This name appears in the catalogue of a 1941 exhibition in New York that included the painting, and again, with the city added, in Judy Egerton, British Sporting and Animal Paintings 1655-1867, London, 1978 [1979]: 197-198.

[2] Vokins is identified as the buyer at both the 1891 and the 1906 sales in annotated auction atalogues in the NGA Library, copies in NGA curatorial files.

[3] The names of Enfield, Stratford, and Cochran appear in the catalogue of the 1941 exhibition at The Century Club, with Cochran's ownership coming before that of the Earl of Stratford. Egerton 1978, 197, put the names in the order given here, and adds a question mark to the Earl's name.

[4] The Times (14 February 1920): 17, reported that the painting was sold to Dighton. The painting was noted as owned by him when it was reproduced in a Country Life supplement to the issue of 15 July 1922. It was not included in a 4 May 1925 sale of some of Dighton's collection at Christie's, London.

[5] Vernay is noted as the owner by H.A. Bryden, "Four Sporting Pieces," Country Life (7 May 1927): 743, and Walter Shaw Sparrow, "Ben Marshall's Centenary," The Connoisseur 95, no. 402 (February 1935): 61. He lent the painting to a 1938 exhibition in Washington, D.C.

[6] Stout lent the painting to the 1941 exhibition in New York. A photograph dated 15 May 1945 in the Gottscho-Schleisner Collection, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, shows the painting hanging in the upper hall of the Stout house, above what appears to be a mezzotint by Henry Macbeth-Raeburn after the painting.

[7] Egerton 1978, 197.

Exhibition History

1806
Annual Exhibition, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1806, no. 292.
1938
Sporting Paintings from 1700 to 1937, Museum of Modern Art Gallery, Washington, D.C., 1938, unnumbered brochure, repro. on cover.
1941
Outdoor England, The Century Club, New York, 1941, no. 8.

Bibliography

1922
Country Life (Supplement to 15 July 1922): liii, repro.
1948
"A Ben Marshall Picture." Apollo (June 1948): 142.
1978
Noakes, Aubrey. Ben Marshall 1768-1835. Leigh-on-Sea, 1978: 38, no. 85.

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