Benjamin Marshall (14 October 1768 – 24 July 1835) was an English sporting and animal painter. He was a follower of George Stubbs and studied under Lemuel Abbott for a short period of time.
His portraits of sporting characters included those of J. G. Shaddick, 1806, and Daniel Lambert, 1807. Two pictures of fighting cocks, exhibited in 1812, were engraved in mezzotint by Charles Turner in the same year with the titles of ‘The Cock in Feather’ and ‘The Trimm’d Cock.’ Other engraved pictures are ‘Hap-hazard’ and ‘Muly Moloch,’ racehorses belonging to the Earl of Darlington, engraved as a pair by W. and G. Cooke, 1805, from pictures at Raby Castle; ‘The Earl of Darlington and his Foxhounds,’ by T. Dean, 1805, and the companion subject, ‘Francis Dukinfield Astley and his Harriers,’ by R. Woodman, 1809; ‘Sir Teddy,’ mezzotint by Charles Turner, 1808; ‘Sancho,’ a pointer belonging to Sir John Shelley, etched by Charles Turner in 1808; and ‘Diamond,’ a racehorse, engraved in mezzotint by W. Barnard in 1811.[1]
Sixty paintings of sportsmen, horses, and dogs by Marshall were engraved by John Scott for Wheble’s Sporting Magazine, vols. vii-lxxxi., and eight types of horses by Marshall, also engraved by Scott, appeared in The Sportsman’s Repository, 1820. Marshall’s exhibited and engraved works represent but a small proportion of the commissions which he carried out for patrons of the turf and masters of hounds throughout the country. A number of his pictures of horses are in the collection of Sir Walter Gilbey.
About 1800-10, Marshall was living at 23 Beaumont Street, Marylebone. He had various later addresses in London, but was often described as ‘Marshall of Newmarket,’ where he chiefly lived. He died in the Hackney Road, at the age of sixty-eight, on 24 July 1835
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