George Stubbs at Creswell Crags. Note 11.

For those interested in the paintings of George Stubbs, there is a small but jewel-like exhibition of some of the artist's oils and engravings at the Harley Gallery, Mansfield Road, Welbeck, Nottinghamshire. Nearby Creswell Crags forms the setting for four paintings and two engravings by and after Stubbs, and there are a further two superb oils relating to the 3rd Duke of Portland at Welbeck Abbey. The exhibition continues until 21 December.

The Harley Gallery has produced an excellent pamphlet comprising two Essays. The first is on Horse Portraits in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Britain; and the second: George Stubbs and Creswell Crags. They are written by Karen Hearn of Tate Britain and Stephen Daniels, Professor of Cultural Geography, Nottingham University.

This note deals primarily with my Creswell Crags, but first a brief comment on the rise of English horse portraiture from its early European origins. Among those earlier horse portraits, or more accurately portraits of some types of horses, are those commissioned by William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle, known for his passion for riding and schooling the horse. The pictures appear in a 1695 inventory as "12 horse pictures and 12 Caesars [busts]" being in the hall at Welbeck. The paintings were life-size and probably date from 1620-1630. There are five in the exhibition, some showing the horse in the rampant pose. Perhaps by using a large reproduction, it would have been of interest to compare them with Stubbs's Scrub, a bay horse belonging to the Marquess of Rockingham c.1762 (Earl of Halifax), a painting that Rockingham commissioned but then refused to accept. From this work one might believe that horse portraiture had failed to advance very much since those painted by Europeans 140 years before. The well-known Whistlejacket, in similar pose and painted only a few years later eradicates that criticism of Stubbs's ability. The essay takes us through the years to the work of John Wootton whose Warren Hill, at Newmarket c.1715 and The Bloody-Shouldered Arabian,c.1723 are in the exhibition.

Before embarking on Creswell Crags mention must also be made of two other marvellous paintings by Stubbs in the exhibition. They are the portrait group of the 3rd Duke of Portland riding out past the Riding School at Welbek Abbey, exhibited in 1767; and The 3rd Duke of Portland with his brother Lord Edward Bentinck watching a groom training a horse at a jumping bar, c.1767-68. They are large paintings of similar size, approx. 40 x 50 inches. Both are delightful, even if it is a little difficult to reconcile the figure of the slightly portly looking aristocrat (perhaps it is just his 'seat') in the first painting to the slim 33 or 34year-old Duke in the second!

It is thought that the Marquess of Rockingham of Wentworth Woodhouse, who had been employing Stubbs for some time, may have introduced the artist to his neighbour, the Duke of Portland at Welbeck Abbey. In so doing, the artist could have visited Creswell Crags in the first or second years of the 1760s.

In 1765, a little after Stubbs had started using the Crags as the setting for a number of portraits of horses, Mrs Mary Delany, amateur artist, portrait painter, author of a Flora, and a favourite of George III and his Queen, made a sketch of the ravine and outcrops, writing: "It is a little Matlock; two ranges of rocks, towering as it were in rivalship of one another, feathered with wood, embossed with ivy, diversified with caves and cliffs." There is no doubt the place made a considerable impression on Stubbs, although on surprisingly few other arists at the time. The 'Creswell Crags'paintigs in the exhibiton are:

(1) Horse devoured by a Lion, c.1762/63, exhibited in 1763. (Tate Britain).
(2) A grey hack with a groom and greyhound, Creswell Crags,c.1762. (Tate Britain).
(3) The Duke of Ancaster's Turkish horse with a Turkish groom at Creswell Crags, c.1763/64. (Private Collection).
(4) The Marquess of Rockingham's Arabian stallion held by a groom at Creswell Crags, c.1765/66. (National Museums of Scotland).

In (2) to (4) the painting of the Crags with water below is very similar. In (1) (the earliest painting), the Crags are in the distance while a shaded rocky cave provides a convenient hideout from which the lion springs onto the horse's neck. As Judy Egerton points out in a Burlington Magazine article and in her monumental George Stubbs, Painter (Yale, 2007), earlier versions of this theme in the Paul Mellon Collection and National Gallery of Victoria, Australia have "less convincing" settings (comparatively open country; but would one any more expect to find a lion in Mrs Delany's caves at Creswell Crags? Remarkably, some thousands of years before the answer would have been, Yes). The painting in the Mellon Collection, Lion attacking a Horse was apparently paid for by Rockingham in December 1762 pointing to Stubbs first visiting the Crags in that year or in early 1763. In a painting of A stallion called Romulus in the possession of the Rt. Hon. Lord Viscount Spencer, Stubbs's first exhibit at the Society of Artists in 1761 also has an idealised background of rock and water, but it requires too great a stretch of the imagination to believe this too is Creswell Crags. A painting of Mares and Foals in a craggy landscape , c.1767 (Macclesfield Collection)(not in this exhibition) is one of the finest of Stubbs's series of mares and foals pictures. Here, the artist steps back a little, perhaps to one end of the Creswell gorge showing a single rock towering to the left with cottages below and an expanse of water to the right. This is an almost identical setting (apart from some detail among the cottages, farm or mill buildings) to that given to the first of Stubbs's four paintings of Shooting. The four engravings have been lent by the British Sporting Art Trust and Plate 1, Two Gentlemen going a Shooting, 1769, allows this similarity to be seen. Also at the Harley Gallery, is a mezzotint of The Brown Horse Mask [Marske], 1771, where a cottage precariously surmounts a rocky crag.

Stubbs was obviously inspired greatly by the features and atmosphere of this small ravine, one side in Derbyshire, the other in Nottinghamshire, since for eight years (1762-1770), he used it on so many occasions as the setting for some of his more romantic paintings. And for the next 11 weeks this fascination can be explored at the Harley Gallery.