The Hunting of Chevy Chase

A hunt taken from a story

The record files this under cultural heritage, mythology and fantasy — and not under portraiture, landscape or any of the headings this catalogue attaches to pictures of actual occasions. That combination is how this register recognises a narrative subject: a hunt that comes from a text rather than from a field. The distinction changes what the animal is doing. In a sporting picture the horse performs a procedure that a viewer could have watched; in a narrative one it performs a plot, and the details are governed by the story's requirements rather than by the day's.

What the record holds

The catalogue gives 1826 as the date of creation and the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery as the location. No dimensions are recorded; the field is empty. Romanticism is the recorded style and British the nationality attached to the painter. Alongside the narrative headings the record carries Animal Art and Animal Art > Horse, and the measured colour family of the image is brown.

Twenty-one hunting titles, two kinds of picture

Twenty-one works in this register name a hunt in the title, and they divide along exactly this line: the ones that record a practice and the ones that illustrate a story. Sorting by century mixes them together. Sorting by what the animal is doing keeps them apart, which is the argument for organising a catalogue this way.