Introduction vii. 



artists who have devoted their talents to the portrayal 

 of animal life and scenes of sport ; and it is with the 

 view of supplying this blank that the following chapters 

 have been compiled. 



The English school of animal painters is one of com- 

 paratively recent date ; it is perhaps not generally known 

 that prior to the year 1700, there were but two artists 

 who made the delineation of animals a speciality ; these 

 were Francis Barlow, born in 1640, and Luke Cradock, 

 born in 1657. Charles Collins, born in 1680, has left 

 proof of remarkable ability in paintings of bird life, but 

 by far the better part of his work was done during the 

 earlier decades of the eighteenth century. Peter Tilleman, 

 a German by birth, but an Englishman by adoption, 

 painted many racing pictures ; but inasmuch as he was 

 born in 1684, his artistic career began with the opening 

 years of the eighteenth century. The same remark applies 

 to John Wootton, born 1685, who must be regarded as 

 the first great English animal painter. 



Prior to 1700, the only important painters resident in 

 this country were natives of Germany, Holland, Spain, 

 France and Belgium. We owe much to these artists 

 for most of them established art schools and instructed 

 our countrymen in art ; the works of our earlier animal 

 painters have therefore the additional interest which 

 accrues to evidence of this foreign influence. The 

 amount of information now obtainable concerning the 

 lives of these earlier painters is small and what has been 

 procured is the result of some considerable enquiry and 

 research. 



Art in seventeenth-century England received little 

 encouragement and but meagre support ; the demand 

 for artistic productions was limited and such men as 

 Cradock, Collins and Casteels found their abilities most 

 often in request for decorative work, the adornment of 



