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Lot Essay
Stylistically this painting can be compared with Marshall's Portrait of the Hon. Peniston Lamb with his horse Assasin and dog Tanner illustrated in colour as the frontispiece of Walter Shaw Sparrow's George Stubbs and Ben Marshall, (London, 1929). That work, long given to Stubbs, is neither signed nor dated, but also shows in Lamb's portrait the influence of Lemuel Francis Abbott, to whom Marshall had been apprenticed between 1791 and 1794.
No dated Marshall is recorded before 1796 and the early horse portraits known from engravings in The Sporting Magazine do not show the ability of the present work. It is therefore likely that this painting and the Peniston Lamb portrait can be dated between 1797 and 1799 when the fine portrait of Diamond (Paul Mellon Collection, Yale Center of British Art) was painted.
No dated Marshall is recorded before 1796 and the early horse portraits known from engravings in The Sporting Magazine do not show the ability of the present work. It is therefore likely that this painting and the Peniston Lamb portrait can be dated between 1797 and 1799 when the fine portrait of Diamond (Paul Mellon Collection, Yale Center of British Art) was painted.