Ringwood

Ringwood stands against a dark landscape, his white neck and legs catching the light while a great black patch stretches along his back. His body faces right, but his head turns a little towards us. Painted by George Stubbs in 1792, this is a portrait of a named Brocklesby hound. The oil painting measures 100 × 126 cm and is privately held. An individual dog commands the picture. ^[1]

The name connects the animal with Charles Anderson-Pelham of Brocklesby in Lincolnshire, for whom Stubbs painted several subjects. Lincoln Museum identifies Ringwood among the dogs the artist painted for this patron. The portrait therefore has a particular owner and setting in sporting history, even though no owner, huntsman or companion appears beside the hound. ^[2]

A standing dog with a turning head

Ringwood occupies almost the entire width available to him. His raised tail approaches the left edge; his muzzle reaches towards the tree on the right. There is little empty ground around his feet. That close fit gives an ordinary standing posture unusual weight. The dog is presented at a distance from which we can take in his whole build, yet he is large enough for the turns of his head and neck to become the focus of attention. ^[1]

The side view makes the torso easy to follow. A long back, deep underside and strong change of direction at the hind leg form a clear silhouette. Stubbs does not carry that side view uniformly through the animal, however. The head turns out of the body's plane, exposing more of the face than a strict profile would allow. We encounter a dog who seems to have registered something beside or beyond the picture, while the body remains steadily planted. ^[1]

The ears are particularly easy to misread in a small reproduction. They hang down, with the nearer ear forming a rounded brown shape against the lighter neck. Alertness comes from the lifted head and the direction of the eyes, rather than from upright ears. The dark nose, pale muzzle and narrow white stripe on the forehead organise the face into small, clearly differentiated areas. Nothing needs to be added to the expression for it to hold our attention. ^[1]

Below, the legs establish a more complicated arrangement than the broad torso initially suggests. The near foreleg drops almost straight down, while the legs farther away appear at different intervals beneath the body. The hind limbs are staggered, opening a space under the belly. These offsets prevent the animal from looking like a flat cut-out. His stance can be understood across the ground, as well as along the surface of the canvas. ^[1]

The tail supplies another change of direction. It rises from the haunch, bends upwards and finishes in a conspicuous pale tip. Its curve interrupts the long horizontal sweep of the back. At the opposite end, the head is held clear of the chest, with the muzzle extending into the space before the tree. The two ends of the dog are differently animated, giving the still body a sense of readiness without showing an actual step or leap. ^[1]

Coat, light and the surrounding landscape

The coat is a major part of Ringwood's identity within the picture. Black covers much of the upper body, tan warms the head, shoulder and haunch, and white runs through the neck, underside and limbs. These are large, distinct shapes rather than an evenly mottled surface. A small pale interruption near the top of the black saddle catches the eye because it breaks an otherwise continuous dark area. ^[1]

Stubbs makes those markings describe volume. The tan shoulder darkens as it approaches the black torso, while the pale neck turns through light and shade towards the head. The white underside has its own changing contour, narrowing and rising between the legs. Colour identifies the dog, but it also helps us understand the body's rounded surfaces. This is one reason the portrait rewards looking beyond the outline: the interior of the silhouette remains carefully articulated. ^[1]

The strongest pale passages appear against some of the darkest parts of the setting. White legs separate themselves from brown earth and shadow; the neck stands out against the tree and sky. The black back presents a different problem. There, the contour is made legible through smaller changes in the surrounding tone. The portrait moves between emphatic contrasts and quieter edges, allowing the eye to travel around the animal without every boundary being equally sharp. ^[1]

The tree is more than a backdrop behind the head. Its rising, sloping mass balances the dog's extended body. At the far right, tall flowering stems continue upwards, while broad leaves spread towards the lower corner. On the left, the view opens into a narrow band of distant land and lighter sky. These unequal surroundings hold Ringwood between an enclosed foreground and a landscape that continues beyond him. ^[1]

Walter Gilbey's 1898 catalogue identified the tall plant beside the trunk as a foxglove. Its presence was therefore noticed in an early published description of the painting. Within the composition, its slender stems and broad lower leaves offer a useful contrast to the hound's smooth coat and compact shape. The historical description supplies a name for the flower, without establishing a particular symbolic intention. ^[16]

No visible chase explains the dog's posture. There is no fox, second hound, rider or restraining hand. The landscape gives him room to exist independently of an immediate sporting episode. That absence changes our pace as viewers: instead of following an action through several figures, we examine the relationship between one animal's head, body, markings and surroundings. The broader range of Stubbs's animal painting includes many more crowded encounters; here, concentration comes from isolation. ^[1]

Ringwood and his Brocklesby owner

Charles Anderson-Pelham is often identified by his later title, first Baron Yarborough. He received that barony in 1794, two years after Ringwood was painted. His son, also Charles, became the first Earl of Yarborough in 1837. Those distinctions matter when reading older collection descriptions: an Earl's later possession of the portrait does not make an earl its original patron. ^[17]

Stubbs's association with the elder Anderson-Pelham extended beyond this canvas. Lincoln Museum records work for him in 1776 and again in 1792, and identifies its Lemon and White Water Spaniel as another commission from him. Ringwood thus belongs to an established relationship between artist and patron, with different dogs receiving separate portraits. The connection is more specific than the general observation that Stubbs painted animals for wealthy sporting owners. ^[2]

Gilbey's Brocklesby list places Ringwood among a varied group of Stubbs paintings, including the spaniel, a pony with a hound and portraits of huntsmen. He describes Ringwood as a signed and dated canvas of 1792. The list situates the picture within a household collection where people, working animals and favoured individual animals could all be commemorated. It records that collection in 1898, rather than supplying a complete account of every later change of ownership. ^[16]

Yet the human relationship remains outside the painted scene. Ringwood has no visible badge, kennel or attendant explaining his place in the household. Knowledge of the patron adds a historical setting, while the image asks us first to recognise the animal himself. This balance is central to the experience of the portrait: we know that someone valued this dog, but the canvas gives the dog the entire encounter with the viewer. ^[1]

How later sportsmen read the portrait

The picture acquired a second use as a historical reference for hounds. In the additional hunting chapters of the 1859 edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses, the editor described examining papers at Brocklesby. These included a 1713 agreement to combine hounds in a joint pack, stud records he said had been maintained from 1746, and pedigree journals kept by the first Lord Yarborough from 1797. The same account singled out Stubbs's 1792 Ringwood portrait for its resemblance to later descendants. ^[18]

This is valuable evidence of how a nineteenth-century sporting writer looked at the painting. He treated it as a record of physical type across generations, alongside written kennel history. His account does not provide Ringwood's own mating entries or a complete pedigree. What it demonstrates is the importance attached to likeness: a named animal portrait could remain useful after the sitter's lifetime because later viewers believed it preserved recognisable features of earlier hounds. ^[18]

W. B. Forbes approached the subject differently in Hounds, Gentlemen, please! in 1910. Discussing coat colour, he referred to an engraving from a Stubbs picture of Brocklesby Ringwood. He described a deep-bodied dog with short, substantial forelegs and discussed the practical visibility of white markings. His account shows a sportsman assessing a representation through the qualities he valued in hounds. It also reminds us that the same portrait might attract scrutiny for build and colouring as well as for artistic accomplishment. ^[19]

Forbes attached the unexplained date 1788 to his reference. Without identifying his actual sheet, it would be unsafe to use that number to alter the canvas's established 1792 date or to assign a publication history to the engraving. His passage is best understood as a later response to an image he knew as Ringwood. The history of prints after Stubbs requires attention to the individual sheet as well as the painted subject. ^[19]

Another pair of hounds, another commission

A useful companion among Stubbs's paintings is Tate's A Couple of Foxhounds, also dated 1792. That is a separate oil on canvas, measuring 101.6 × 127 cm. The Tate information transmitted by Getty associates it, probably, with the Reverend Thomas Vyner, who knew Anderson-Pelham and hunted at Brocklesby. The shared date and social connections help explain why the two works are often considered together. ^[20]

The distinction between them is just as useful. Ringwood has a preserved individual name; the names of the Tate dogs have not been established. The Tate-derived account also leaves open whether its animals are foxhounds or harriers. Those uncertainties belong to that particular picture. They do not identify one of its dogs as Ringwood, nor turn the pair into a documented extension of his portrait. ^[20]

Comparing the records brings us back to the specificity of the single hound. The title Ringwood, a Brocklesby Foxhound combines a name, a place and a working identity. Each contributes something different: the name distinguishes the animal, Brocklesby connects him to his owner's world, and foxhound describes the role under which he was remembered. The separate account of A Couple of Foxhounds offers a different problem of identification. ^{[1] [20]}

From a private collection to later audiences

Ringwood's public history extends beyond sporting books. In Spring 1991, Lincolnshire Past & Present reported his inclusion in the Man's Best Friend exhibition at Birmingham Art Gallery. Its account expressly distinguished the portrait for Charles Anderson Pelham from the two hounds associated with the Vyner family. That regional notice preserves a useful episode in the picture's exhibition history without making the two paintings share a provenance. ^[21]

In 2023, Ringwood appeared in Portraits of Dogs: From Gainsborough to Hockney at the Wallace Collection in London. BBC Culture discussed him among the exhibition's works. The museum's programme ran from 29 March to 15 October and deliberately concentrated on dogs shown without human companions. In that setting, Ringwood could be encountered alongside other attempts to give an animal an independent pictorial presence. His appearance there was an exhibition loan, rather than evidence that the painting had entered the Wallace's permanent collection. ^{[22] [23]}

More recent writing has also singled out the portrait's quality. A 2024 Country Life account reported Judy Egerton's admiration for its truthfulness to a living animal. That response directs attention towards the painting's particular achievement: the individuality of a body and face held within an exceptionally clear composition. It is praise of a portrait's effect, rather than a claim that the picture can answer every historical question about its sitter. ^[24]

The original and a modern reversed copy

A smaller Ringwood in the Yale Center for British Art is a separate object. The museum currently identifies its maker as an unknown artist after Stubbs, dates it to in or after 1984, and records oil on glass, 23 × 30 cm. It was purchased at Audap & Mirabaud in Paris in 2016. These facts distinguish it materially, chronologically and in authorship from Stubbs's large 1792 canvas. ^[25]

The difference is immediately visible in the direction of the image. Yale's dog faces left, with the tree at the left and the raised tail at the right. The broad division of the black, white and tan coat repeats the familiar arrangement in reverse. Seeing the two images together makes orientation a practical means of telling them apart, even before their size and support are considered. The glass painting records the composition's later reproduction; it is not another original painted by Stubbs. ^[25]

In the original, the rightward muzzle and leftward sweep of the body make a long, steady passage across the canvas. The head turn interrupts that passage just enough to bring the face towards us. However much history accumulates around Ringwood, this encounter remains direct: an animal standing on the earth, held in the light, given enough space and specificity to sustain a portrait by himself. ^[1]