1818

Portrait of the Weston Family

English, 1768 - 1835

Benjamin Marshall is best known as a painter of sporting subjects and a journalist focused on horse racing, but this painting testifies to his abilities as a portraitist. Here, he stages the Weston family as if just about to go game hunting, a sport only accessible to the upper classes. His skill as a painter of animals is evident in the careful rendering of the horse’s muscles and the dogs’ glossy fur. Marshall typically sketched his figures individually from life, only uniting them within the composition while alone in his studio, a practice that gives his paintings a somewhat disjointed, collage-like quality. This work likely depicts William Weston (1769–1824) with his three children, Henry (1795–1887), George (1796–1840?), and Anne (1792–1840). According to family tradition, the horse was named Rainbow.