Sawrey Gilpin

Sawrey Gilpin RA (30 October 1733 – 8 March 1807) was an English animal painter, illustrator, and etcher who specialised in paintings of horses and dogs. He was made a Royal Academician.

Gilpin was born in Carlisle in Cumbria, the seventh child of Captain John Bernard Gilpin, a soldier and amateur artist, and Matilda Langstaffe. He was the younger brother of the Rev. William Gilpin, a clergyman and schoolmaster who wrote of several influential works on picturesque scenery.

As a child Gilpin learnt to draw from his father, who ran a drawing school in Carlisle. Having shown an early predilection for art, he was sent to London at the age of fourteen to study under the marine painter Samuel Scott in Covent Garden. Gilpin, however, preferred sketching the passing market carts and horses, and it soon became evident that animals, especially horses, were his speciality. Gilpin left Scott in 1758, and devoted himself to animal painting from then on. Some of his sketches were shown to the Duke of Cumberland, who was much impressed by them, and employed Gilpin to draw from his stud at Newmarket and at Windsor, where he was ranger of the Great Park. He afforded the artist considerable material assistance in his profession.

Gilpin lived at Knightsbridge in London for some years. He became one of the best painters of horses that the country had produced, and was almost as successful in other areas of animal art. He sometimes attempted historical pictures on a larger scale in which horses were prominent, but with rather less success. He was purely an animal painter, and required the assistance of others to paint landscapes and figures; for the former he often turned to George Barret, Sr., to whom he gave similar service in return, and for the latter he sometimes used the services of John Zoffany, and Philip Reinagle.

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