By this method the artist obtains freshness, virility and truth that could not be secured if a complete painting were attempted from an animal in training.
“Ready,” a sketch by Martin Stainforth in the National Art Gallery of N.S.W. In the original of this sketch Martin Stainforth has displayed excellent technique, and shows his facility for painting animals in a lifelike manner.
In his paintings of dogs the same extreme care is shown to preserve the character of the animal. Pal, the bull dog sketched above, is owned by Mrs. Herbert Marks.
In this picture Martin Stainforth has successfully overcome the problem of painting an eight-year-old setter as it would have appeared at the age of three. The dog, Mallwyd Albert, is owned by Dr. Herbert Marks.
There have been a few men in Australia who could both draw and paint the horse. One of them was Douglas Fry. I knew him well, and had every opportunity of examining his work. As a draughtsman he was fine. His pencil studies of horses showed expert facility, yet when he employed colour as his medium, though he produced an artistic study, the animal often lacked that lifelike quality so essential to a successful portrait. Stainforth may not be able to do with the pencil what Fry could, and I am sure he doesn’t know the horse as Fry did, yet he far out-distances his late rival, not only in his facility for technical expression and in his gift for infusing life, but because he has the power to delicately handle his subject without robbing it of its strength and character.
Aylyng Arnold, who from 1906 to 1910 was a special correspondent for the “London Sporting Life,” happened to be visiting Australia in 1915 and saw some of our artist’s work in Melbourne. He did not know Stainforth, but he went back to his hotel and wrote him a letter in which the following words occur: “I can confidently say I have seen as many portraits of horses as falls to the lot of any one man, but never have I seen anything approaching yours.”