Sawrey Gilpin RA (1733 - 1807)

RA Collection: People and Organisations

Sawrey Gilpin was born near Carlisle in Cumberland, the seventh child of Captain John Bernard Gilpin, a landscape painter, and his wife Matilda née Langstaffe. He showed artistic talent from a young age under the tutelage of his father, who sent him to London in 1749 to study with the marine painter Samuel Scott.

Gilpin spent nine years with Scott, first as apprentice then as assistant. During this time, he became fascinated with street markets and animals he encountered around London. He came to the attention of William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland and Ranger of Windsor Great Park, who in 1758 commissioned Gilpin to draw at his stud farms at Newmarket and Windsor.

Gilpin married Elizabeth Broom in 1759, with whom he went on to have six children, including the landscape artist and gardener William Sawrey Gilpin (1761/2-1843).

Gilpin exhibited with the Incorporated Society of Artists from 1762 until 1783, becoming its President in 1774. From 1768 Gilpin exhibited at the Royal Academy, and continued exhibiting pictures there every year until his death. He was elected an associate of the Royal Academy in 1795 and became a full member in 1797.

Throughout his career, Gilpin was overshadowed by fellow animal-painter George Stubbs. Both artists suffered from the lack of recognition given to animal painting as a lesser genre. Gilpin sought to elevate the status of his art by depicting horses as if they had emotions and personalities akin to humans. Gilpin was more interested in portraying horses in motion, whereas Stubbs concentrated on the anatomy of the horse.

Gilpin’s wife died around 1802 and he moved to stay at Southill, Bedfordshire at the invitation of his friend and patron Samuel Whitbread. In 1805 Gilpin returned to London to live with his daughters, where he died in 1807.

RA Collections Decolonial Research Project - Extended Biography

Gilpin’s brother, Sir Joseph Dacre Appleby Gilpin (1745-1834), purchased property on the island of Tobago in 1770, where enslaved people likely worked (Note 1).

There may also be some connection between Gilpin’s family and the slave-trader James Sawrey, who was active in the 1780s, through Gilpin’s great aunt Anne (Note 2).

Gilpin’s nephew, John Bernard Gilpin (son of his brother, the art writer William Gilpin) became the British consul for Rhode Island, a major colonial shipping hub.

There were several Gilpins living in East Sheen, who are listed on the UCL Legacies of Slave Ownership database as owning enslaved persons and property in Jamaica in the early 19th century. Sawrey Gilpin’s son William Sawrey Gilpin (1761/2-1843), a landscape painter and landscape gardener, spent some time with his cousins in East Sheen in the 1820s.

Notes

1. https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/person/view/2146632829 (accessed 31 March 2022).

2. Ibid.

Relevant ODNB entries

Cust, L. H., and Peter Tomory. “Gilpin, Sawrey (1733–1807), animal painter.” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 23 Sep. 2004; Accessed 31 Mar. 2022. https://www-oxforddnb-com.lonlib.idm.oclc.org/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-10761

Andrews, Malcolm. “Gilpin, William (1724–1804), writer on art and headmaster.” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 23 Sep. 2004; Accessed 31 Mar. 2022. https://www-oxforddnb-com.lonlib.idm.oclc.org/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-10762

Piebenga, Sophieke. “Gilpin, William Sawrey (1761/2–1843), landscape painter and landscape gardener.” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 23 Sep. 2004; Accessed 31 Mar. 2022. https://www-oxforddnb-com.lonlib.idm.oclc.org/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-10763