The Earthstopper on the Banks of the Derwent, Joseph Wright, 1773

Modern fox hunting was developed in the second half of the eighteenth century to replace the declining sport of stag hunting. Acting on behalf of the local hunt, the earthstopper plugs up the entrance to the fox’s earth to prevent it escaping from the next day’s hunt. In order to avoid blocking an animal in, the diligent earthstopper goes about his task at dead of night whilst foxes are out prowling. A terrier dog, used to flush out foxholes, accompanies him. Although an older employee of the landowner, the earthstopper’s muscular physique is still discernable beneath his patched work clothes.

Figure of Diana the Huntress, William Duesbury & Co, c1765

In Roman mythology Diana, twin sister of Apollo, was the virgin goddess of the hunt, the moon, and childbirth. When the mortal hunter Actaeon accidentally came across her bathing, she turned him into a stag and set his own dogs upon him. They duly chased and killed him.

Augmentation

We have here two images of hunting, both containing elements which to modern sensibilities might appear cruel. Wright’s earthstopper denies the fox a ‘sporting chance’ whilst Diana turns the hunter into the prey. Diana symbolically castrates her suitor whilst the earthstopper closes off the channel into the vixen’s lair. The sexuality of the two figures is tantalisingly displayed, only to be denied. The virginal goddess of childbirth is juxtaposed with a figure likened by a contemporary poet to a nocturnal gravedigger. *

*(…’like a sexton with his spade’ from Needwood Forest, a poem by one of Wright’s patrons, Francis Noel Clarke Mundy, 1776).