George Francis Schreiber, a native of Germany born in 1803, was the first professional photographer to focus his business on the portraits of race horses.
George F. Schreiber
George F. Schrieber
In the formative years of the Standardbred breed, he presented the trotting community with one of its most precious gifts: an authentic image of many of its founding sires and dams, including Goldsmith Maid, Ethan Allen, American Girl, Green Mountain Maid, Flora Temple, Lucy, Almont and, the most prestigious of his subjects, Hambletonian.
In fact, the portrait of Hambletonian produced by Schreiber & Sons in 1866 is arguably the most faithful representation of the great sire. Not only was it taken much earlier than other images of Hambletonian – when he was seventeen rather than when he was old and past his prime – but it is also the only image of him that has never been retouched by studio painters.
Portraits, traditionally the responsibility of artists and illustrators, tended to sacrifice precision and accuracy in order to appease the owner's vanity. The result was a lovely, often fanciful, rendering of a horse; but not one that could always be trusted.
Schreiber amended this characteristic of portraits by focusing on their potential long-term function rather than their short-term enjoyment. In his book, Portraits of Noted Horses of America, Schreiber states: "The value of such pictures as these is not alone in the pleasure of the present, but will increase with years, indefinitely, becoming an interesting part of history that can forever be relied on as perfectly accurate."
If not for Schreiber's skill as a photographer and forward-thinking mindset, later generations, including key equine artists Robert Dickey and George Ford Morris, would only have subjective paintings as references, and no record at all of those horses whose portraits were never commissioned, such as Mambrino Patchen, Americus and Sentinel. Schreiber passed away in 1892 at the age of 89. He is a 2009 inductee into Harness Racing's national Immortal Hall of Fame.
