MISTAKING HIS TALENT. 295 



horses to perfection : his colouring and the gloss of 

 condition he gives are both admirable : still, with him 

 and every artist I am acquainted with, Marshall's 

 peculiar point of excellence is wanting, namely, the 

 perfect look of hair that he gave. Here was also 

 Ward's excellence. The latter artist's, as also Cha- 

 lon's pictures of dogs and other animals, are perhaps 

 faultless : but, so far as horses were concerned, Chalon 

 never was happy in his productions : in fact, unless 

 an artist is a good judge of a horse as an animal, he 

 cannot paint one from nature : his eye cannot detect 

 beauties or faults in the living animal : this being the 

 case, he cannot detect them on his canvass. Such an 

 artist could copy a picture probably so as to deceive 

 us as to which was or was not the original, because 

 he would copy the portrait of a horse as he would 

 the drawing of a church or a tree ; but character 

 is wanted as well as a faithful likeness in painting 

 living objects. This no man can catch who is not a 

 judge of such objects, and here, of course, many 

 artists fail, particularly as portrait painters. 



Among the many splendid prints that have been 

 brought out of late years, it is rather singular that no 

 really fine print of a chase has been produced, or at least 

 I have not seen one. We have some most magnificent 

 ones of the "meets" and characters of different Hunts, 

 many that, I should say, would cost a couple of thou- 

 sands engraving : most interesting they must be to 

 the characters themselves, their relatives and friends ; 

 but an equally fine print of the Quorn and other first- 

 rate Hunts in chase as an accompaniment to the 

 "meets" would be such soul-stirring additions to the 

 walls of a Sportsman's room, that, even supposing 

 such an anomaly as a fox-hunter flagging in the pur- 



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