Philip Reinagle, R.A.

Anonymous sale, London, Christie's, 10 April 1992, lot 71, for £12,650 (as a pair);

Anonymous sale, London, Christie's, 25 March 1994, lot 15, for £17,250 (as a pair).

This work was produced by one of the foremost painters of animals in Georgian England, Philip Reinagle, R.A. (1749–1833). Reinagle was only second to the great George Stubbs when it came to the painting animals in a sensitive manner. His paintings of dogs, within atmospheric backgrounds, have received great interest since their completion two centuries ago. A set of eleven such paintings, smaller than the present lot, were completed for The Sportsman's Cabinet publication by the English veterinary surgeon William Taplin and sold in these rooms 13 November 1991, lots 104–113.

The Sportsman's Repository, another publication dating to 1820 to which Reinagle contributed Greyhounds, records that 'The greyhound is of a beautiful and delicate formation for speed and majestic attraction; if a metaphorical allusion may by made between the human and the brute creation, the allegory would not be too far extended in considering the greyhound, for his appearance, equanimity, mildness and affability, one of the superior classes of his own society.'¹

Alongside publishers, aristocratic patrons too would commission the artist to capture their favoured animals in an appropriate setting. A similar view of pointers stalking grouse in a landscape, showing the dogs of Lord Middleton and dated to 1792, was sold in these Rooms, 6 July 1977, lot 55.

¹ R. Duthy, 'An Affair of the Heart', in Countryweek, October 1991, p. 60.