While this painting contained within itself evidence of its great value as a likeness of its subject, it lacked confirmation as “true to the life;” and nothing could supply this lack but to find a portrait of the same horse, painted by another artist, and then if the two agreed, the proof would be fully satisfying to the understanding. A little over a hundred years ago Lord Francis Godolphin Osborne, Duke of Leeds, and heir to Lord Godolphin, wrote Sir Charles Bunbury, a great race-horse man, that he had a painting of Godolphin Arabian, by Wootton, at Gog Magog Hills. Over sixty years ago an American gentleman wrote to Mr. Skinner’s magazine that he had seen a painting of Godolphin Arabian hanging in Houghton Hall, Norfolk. In 1878 my physician told me I must quit work for awhile, and that I had better visit the great Exposition at Paris that year. I was anxious to see the Fair, but I was a great deal more anxious to see those two paintings of Godolphin Arabian, if they were still in existence. Gog Magog Hills is a quaint old place, and the origin and meaning of its name is lost in a very remote antiquity. As it has not been the residence of its owners for more than a hundred years, it is much neglected. The people in charge were very obliging, and I was immediately admitted to the view of Wootton’s painting of Godolphin Arabian. The first glance was a complete vindication of the truthfulness of the Maryland painting as a true likeness in every important feature of the outline and proportions. The canvas is about four and a half by four feet, inclosed in a massive frame. After studying it and comparing it, point by point for more than an hour, with a copy of the Maryland painting, it became evident they were not painted by the same hand, although the horse had the same position in both pictures, with the exception that the right hind foot was thrown backward in the Wootton painting instead of forward, and thus gave a less abrupt droop of the rump. The head was precisely the same shape, but in the large painting the articulations were less distinct and expressive.
After a little peregrination through Norfolk, studying the “Norfolk Trotter” as then called, but since called “Hackney,” on his “native heath,” I reached Houghton Hall, in Norfolk. This grand old place was built over a hundred and sixty years ago by the famous Sir Robert Walpole, and at that time it was considered the most splendid structure, as a gentleman’s country seat, in all England. For many years it has been the property of the Marquis of Cholmondeley, but is not often occupied as a residence. Here too, I was lucky, for upon my entrance to the picture gallery, about the first object upon which my eye rested was the painting of the Godolphin Arabian, and the first impression was that there must be “spooks” around, for that seemed certainly the Maryland picture I was looking at. I had it taken down and removed to a good light, and there the whole mystery was removed. It is difficult to compare two peas. All you can say about them is that they were just alike, and that is all I can say about the Galloway picture in Maryland and the Houghton Hall picture in England. The paintings were the same size, and the pigments used were of precisely the same shades of color and quality. The colors were peculiar in the fact that the artist had used no varnish nor oil that would leave a shiny appearance. The Houghton Hall picture had a black, glossy margin all around it of about five inches in width on which the names of the most noted of his progeny were inscribed in gold letters, and at the bottom was this inscription: “The original picture taken at The Hills, by D. Murrier, painter to H. R. H. the Duke of Cumberland.” This explained the modest signature attached to the Maryland picture, which was a replica of the original. “The Hills” is the local designation of “Gog Magog Hills.” The word “original” not only implies that the picture was made from life, but that one or more replicas were made at the same time.