BC 193
JOHN FREDERICK HERRING Snr
Blackfriars 1795 - 1865 Meopham Park, Kent
Sir Mark Wood with his dark brown filly Vespa, winner of the Oaks in 1833, her trainer H Scott and a groom with a grey hack
Signed and dated upper right: JF Herring 1833
Canvas: 28 x 36 in / 71.1 x 91.4 cm
Frame size: 36 x 44 in / 91.4 x 111.8 cm
Provenance:
Commissioned by Sir Mark Wood, 2nd Bt. (1794-1837) in 1833
CV Whitney;
Mrs E Whitney Tippett, Upperville, Virginia, USA
Mr Jack R Dick;
his sale, Sotheby’s London, 31st October 1973, lot 15
Richard Green, London, 1973
Sir Charles Clore
Leger Galleries, London, 1989
Richard Green, 1989
Mr John W Kluge, Morven, Virginia, USA
Exhibited:
London, Richard Green, Annual Exhibition of Sporting Paintings, 1989, no.12, illus. in colour
Literature:
Oliver Beckett, JF Herring and Sons, London 1981, p.102, no.60; illus. in colour pl.7, opposite p.25
Vespa was a dark brown filly foaled in 1830 by Muley out of Miss Wasp, and owned by Sir Mark Wood, 2nd Bt. (1794-1837). She won none of her races in 1832 and started at 50 to 1 against in the Oaks of 1833, ridden by Jem Chapple. Several front runners faded until the race settled down into a duel between Vespa and the Duke of Grafton’s Octave. They ‘ran a very fine race home, Vespa winning by half a neck’ (Thomas Henry Taunton, Portraits of Celebrated Racehorses, vol. III, London 1888, p.136). Taunton comments ‘This was as slow a race as the Derby was a fast one’ (p.136). Chapple won both the Derby and the Oaks in 1833, a feat that had not been performed since Jem Robinson won each of them on Cedric and Cobweb in 1824.
In 1834 Vespa, again ridden by Chapple, won the Oatlands Handicap at Newmarket Craven, beating the Duke of Cleveland’s Trustee by two lengths. She won the King’s Plate at the
Newmarket First Spring Meeting and the King’s Guineas at Chelmsford, before being sold to Count Hunyady and sent to Hungary.
Sir Mark Wood was a leading owner in the 1830s. He came from a Perth family who descended from the ancient Wood family of Largo. His father Sir Mark Wood, 1st Bt. (1750-1829) was a Colonel in the East India Company and Chief Engineer of Bengal. He owned estates at Gatton Park, Surrey and Llandaf Court and elsewhere in Glamorganshire. The elder Mark Wood became head of the family in 1777 on the death of his cousin John Wood and was created a Baronet in 1808. The second Sir Mark lived in Pall Mall and at Hare Park, Cambridgeshire. He died without issue in 1837 and the Baronetcy became extinct.
John Frederick Herring made another version of this painting, almost identical in composition and size (27 ½ x 36 in / 69.8 x 91.4 cm), which was exhibited by Arthur Ackermann & Son Ltd in 1975. It has a slightly less dramatic sky and is signed at the bottom of the stable door, rather than at the top as in the present picture (see Beckett op. cit., under no.60).
JOHN FREDERICK HERRING Snr
Blackfriars 1795 - 1865 Meopham Park, Kent
John Frederick Herring was the son of a London merchant of Dutch parentage, who had been born in America. The first eighteen years of his life were spent in London, where his greatest interests were drawing and horses. In 1814 he moved to Doncaster, arriving just in time to see the Duke of Hamilton’s William win the St. Leger. By 1815 he had married Ann Harris; his sons John Frederick Herring Jnr, Charles and Benjamin were all to become artists, while his daughters Ann and Emma both married painters.
In Doncaster Herring earned his living as a painter of coach insignia and inn signs and his contact with a firm owned by a Mr Wood led to his subsequent employment as a night coach driver. His spare time was spent painting portraits of horses for inn parlours and he became known as the ‘artist coachman’. Herring’s talent was quickly recognised and he soon found himself painting hunters and racehorses for the gentry.
In 1830, Herring left Doncaster for Newmarket, where he spent three years before moving to London. During this time he may have received tuition from Abraham Cooper. In London Herring got into financial difficulties and was rescued by WT Copeland, who commissioned many paintings including designs used for Copeland Spode bone china. In 1840-41 Herring visited Paris by invitation of the Duc d’Orleans, for whom he painted several pictures. In 1845 Herring was appointed Animal Painter to HRH the Duchess of Kent, followed by a commission from Queen Victoria, who was to remain a patron for the rest of his life. Herring spent the last twelve years of his life at Meopham Park near Tonbridge, where he lived as a country squire. He now broadened his subject matter and painted agricultural scenes and narrative pictures, as well as his better known works of hunting, racing and shooting.
A highly successful and prolific artist, Herring ranks with Sir Edwin Landseer as one of the most eminent animal painters of the mid-nineteenth century. His paintings were very popular and many were engraved, including his thirty-three winners of the St Leger and his twenty-one winners of the Derby. Herring exhibited at the Royal Academy 1818-65, the British Institution 1830-65 and the Society of British Artists (whose Vice-President he became in 1842), 1836-52.