Related article: of whose private life and charac-
ter singularly little has hitherto
been known. According to the
generally accurate " Dictionary
of National Biography," the fa-
mous painter of hunting scenes
was originally employed in the
stables of the Duke of Beaufort ;
but this would seem to be an
error. The Badminton records
make no mention of Aiken's Buy Terazosin Hydrochloride
name, and Sir Walter has suc-
ceeded in tracing a grandson and
a granddaughter of the artist,
from whom he has procured some
account of the family in general,
242
baily's magazine.
[OCTOBBl
and of Henry in particular.
Henry's father appears to have
been a Dane who fled to this
country about 1772 foe political
reasons, and settled in Suffolk,
changing his name, Se£frien, to
Aiken ; the latter being the name
of a small village near Aarhus.
The book owes much of its
value to the author's inclusion of
artists whose names are unknown
to the great majority, though their
works should have earned for
them honoured remembrance.
The pictures of such men as
Henry Aiken, Abraham Cooper,
John Herring, Sir £. Landseer,
George Stubbs and James Ward
are familiar to all; but it has
been no man's business until now
to render justice to painters whose
works are of infinite value as con-
tributions to sporting history.
John E. Fernley, for example, is
ut little known outside hunting
circles, and it is a question
whether his work receives there
the meed of appreciation due to
one who has done so much to
show us Leicestershire as it was
in the earlier part of the century.
Charles Hancock, whose career
was contemporary with that of
J. F. Herring, was a prolific
workman whose portraits of fa-
mous horses deserve to be more
widely known ; that knowledge of
them is not more general is pro-
bably due to the fact that he
was overshadowed by his rival
Herring, who painted portraits of
the same giants of the Turf.
Of the private life of painters
who lived and died a century or
more ago there is necessarily
little to tell ; the career of a com-
paratively obscure artist can often
be traced only, and in fragmen-
tary fashion, through his pictures,
and through occasional references
in contemporary publications. Sir
Walter Gilbey has made the most
of material which must often
have been hard to find, and
thanks to his industry, we have
now a book which will assuredly
take its place at once as a work
of reference. Even as he has
unearthed facts relating to the
lives of obscure or forgotten
artists, he has told much that has
never before been published con-
cerning the lives of famous pain-
ters. Of Sir Edwin Landseer he
observes that *'the excellent
article in vol. xxii. of the * Dic-
tionary of National Biography '
leaves little to be said"; but
nevertheless he has added much
to our knowledge of the man.
Sir Walter's twenty-five pages on
Landseer leave a singularly clear
and vivid impression of the great
painter's private life and charac-
ter : the reader feels that he knows
the man as intimately as he knows
the pictures made familiar by the
engraver.
A valuable and important fea-
ture of the book is the list of
works which follows each bio-
graphy. These in some cases
serve to show us how much richer
are the private collections of
English noblemen and others in
the works of old sporting artists
than are the national collections.
Thus neither in the National Gal-
lery or at South Kensington is.
there exhibited a single specimen
of the work of John Wootton, the
first great English animal painter
who flourished during the earlier
half of the eighteenth century;,
while the Duke of Portland's col-
lection at Welbeck Abbey boasts,
no fewer than fourteen paintings by
this artist, and several important
works hang on the walls of the
Duke of Beaufort at Badminton;
in all probability the most re-
presentative collection of his-
works in England. The cata-
logues of the Royal Academy,
since its beginning in 1768, of
other public exhibitions and loan.
I900.J
A GUN-ROOM CAUSBRIE.
243
collections, the wealth of engrav-
ings contained in the old Snorting
Magazine and its contemporaries,
and other sources of information
have been laid under contribu-
tion for these lists ; and if, as the
author warns us, they cannot lay
claim to completeness, they at all
events give an excellent idea of
the scope and nature of each
painter's labours.
The majority of these fifty
biographies appeared in the pages
of this and other sporting maga-
zines ; but in numerous cases
these have been remodelled and
supplemented with fresh facts.
Our readers will also recognise
most of the engravings. A
copious index to the i>aintings,
engravings, sculptures, &c., men-
tioned in the book renders the
contents of this mine of informa-
tion readily accessible.
A Gun-Room Causerie.
FAST GUNS AND AUTOMATIC MECHANISMS.
\
Of all qualities a modem shot-
gun should possess none is so
advantageous to first-class marks-
manship as correct balance, which
alone allows of the speediest mani-
pulation of the gun. But if the
advantage derived from ability to
aim quickly is not to be lost, it is
essential that the gun be fast. A
fast gun is one in which the firing
mechanism acts in the least pos-
sible time. With a fast gun the
striker hits the cap of the car-
tridge within one two-hundredth
of a second from the instant the
trigger is pulled. A slow gun will
require more than that ; either a
small fraction of a second longer,
or such dilatory ignition as the
old flint-lock guns gave. In the
old days, when the merits of per-
cussion-cap guns were contrasted
with the defects of the flint-lock,
much more was made of speed in