page_title: Sawrey Gilpin
section_title: Animal painter
hierarchical_section_title: Sawrey Gilpin / Animal painter
caption_attribution_description: English Springer Spaniel on a cushion
context_page_description: Sawrey Gilpin RA was an English animal painter, illustrator, and etcher who specialised in paintings of horses and dogs. He was made a Royal Academician.
context_section_description: Gilpin lived at Knightsbridge in London for some years. He became one of the best painters of horses that the country had produced, and was almost as successful in other areas of animal art. He sometimes attempted historical pictures on a larger scale in which horses were prominent, but with rather less success. He was purely an animal painter, and required the assistance of others to paint landscapes and figures; for the former he often turned to George Barret, Sr., to whom he gave similar service in return, and for the latter he sometimes used the services of John Zoffany, and Philip Reinagle.
  Gilpin first exhibited with the Incorporated Society of Artists in 1762, and continued to show pictures there, mostly of horses, up to 1783. In 1768, and 1770-1, he exhibited a series of pictures illustrating "Gulliver's visit to the Houyhnhnms", one of which was engraved in mezzotint by Valentine Green; in 1770 a drawing of "Darius gaining the Persian Empire by the neighing of his horse"; in 1771 "The Duke of Cumberland visiting his stud (with a view of Windsor Castle from the Great Park, by William Marlow)". In 1773 he became a director of the society, and in 1774 president.
  He exhibited at the Royal Academy, London from 1786 until his death. He was elected an associate of the academy (ARA) in 1795, and Royal Academician (RA) in 1797. 
  Gilpin married Elizabeth Broom; their son William Sawrey Gilpin (1762–1843) also became an artist, and in later life a landscape gardener. After his wife's death Gilpin lived in Bedfordshire with his friend Samuel Whitbread. He then returned to London and spent his last years with his daughters at Brompton, where he died on 8 March 1807.
  His pupils included John Warwick Smith and George Garrard. The latter married his eldest daughter Matilda.
caption: English Springer Spaniel on a cushion, 1807
exif: {}