46 A HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH TURF. 



for example, Stubbs. This is the one occasion on which I am tempted to desire 

 that photography had been invented, say, a couple of centuries before Daguerre ; for 

 it is a strange lact that even when a really capable artist, who has demonstrated his 

 skill in many other ways, has drawn a horse before the eighteenth century, he has 

 somehow omitted the points for which a breeder will eagerly scrutinise his canvas, 

 and has, with a higher feeling for the general impression of his work which is easily 

 excusable, given the idea of the horse as a whole, as he saw it, without any 

 consideration for what some of us might look for in his painting later on. There 

 are, however, some characteristics too well defined, by artists of too high a rank, to be 

 neglected, and among them I should place the type of horse immortalised by Van 

 Dyck. But there is one thing for which we have to be grateful to the artists, 

 whether they chiefly devoted themselves to sporting pictures or not. They have in 

 a long series of centuries produced a convention for the galloping action of a horse 

 at full speed which is infinitely more satisfactory than the ungainly accuracies of the 

 instantaneous photograph. Several examples of what I mean will be found in this 

 book. The artist has very rightly emphasised those actions which give the beholder 

 an idea of pace, without caring whether a horse ever stretches his forefeet far beyond 

 his nose or not. The machine unfortunately reveals postures too rapid for the 

 human sight, and by no means so agreeable to the human intelligence. 



Let me add that something more like naturalness and accuracy in depicting the 

 animal, even when stationary, was only reached by horse-painters when Stubbs 

 began to work, because this artist was the first to study the anatomy of the horse 

 with any accuracy ; and I reproduce here one of his exquisite plates, to which so 

 many authors have been indebted, and so few have expressed their gratitude. It is 

 the dividing line between the old schools and the new, and it will not be without 

 its value at this period of my story, as something in the nature of an explanatory 

 framework for the boneless impossibilities of the early racing artists. It has been 

 too often forgotten that Rubens and Van Dyck knew as much about a horse as they 

 did about their paint-brushes ; and those who follow me to the last pages of my fifth 

 chapter will realise a little better what is involved by the necessity for relying upon 

 more specialised but far less skilful artists. 



Much more simple and engaging is the task of recalling from the various great 

 galleries of the world the features of the men who owned these queer-looking 

 quadrupeds with which apparently they raced so happily. Here it is no longer 

 necessary to look eagerly for "a fine muzzle, a straight back, high quarters, or long 



