.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
This jug appears to be unrecorded and may have been an individual commission. The scene was probably taken from an engraving by an employee of Sayer & Bennett, which is dated 23 January 1775 and copies (in reverse) the famous engraving by William Woollett. See Lennox-Boyd, Dixon and Clayton, George Stubbs, The Complete Engraved Works, London, 1989, p. 151, no. 43, where the authors explain that "Apart from the addition of a pheasant......there are no significant variations from Stubbs's original design". Woollett's engraving in the British Museum is illustrated, ibid., p. 88, no. 10, (with pointer facing to the right), was first published by Thomas Bradford in 1768, and an early handwritten note, 'Mr Bradford's dog', accompanying an impression sold at Bonham's in 1976, suggests that Bradford had commissioned the painting personally. Stubbs' painting is probably the one now in the Neue Pinakothek, Munich and where it has been at least since 1799. Several prints, derived from Woollett's engraving, were published, including one by ?T. Cook, ibid., no. 329 (unillustrated), where it is noted "a reversed copy of Woollett's dog, in a vignette with grass and faint trees, used as the engraved title to vol. II of The Sporting Magazine, London, J. Wheble, September 1793. Stipple no. 837. The table of contents for December stated that 'the frontispiece is beautifully engraved by Cook'". Indeed it is this print which the Chinese artist may have been sent. Several other engravings after The Spanish Pointer were produced, but many face towards the right rather than the left as on this jug, therefore closely copying the direction of Woollett's dog, rather than Stubbs'.