Lot Essay
Ferneley was one of the most important painters of sporting art of his generation. The sixth son of a Leicestershire wheelwright, the Duke of Rutland is said to have identified Ferneley's talent at a young age and to have persuaded the artist's father to allow him to become a pupil of Ben Marshall, himself of Leicestershire origin, who was then working in London. Over the next years, Ferneley’s reputation grew swiftly; he enrolled in the Royal Academy, and by 1814 had set up a studio in Melton Mowbray, hub of the fox-hunting scene and an important centre for sporting art. By 1853, the date of the present work, Ferneley was well-established in Melton Mowbray, and had garnered a deep-rooted reputation for his sporting paintings, enjoying frequent patronage amongst the aristocracy.
John Ferneley’s account book records that this was one of a pair of paintings commissioned by William Angerstein in October 1853, for which he paid £63 (G. Paget, op cit). The pendant, portraying three other hunters owned by Angerstein with his greyhound Spring, of identical dimensions, was most recently sold Sotheby’s, London, 12 June 2002, lot 18. Although the pair were included in Angerstein’s sale of April 1895, they appear to have been re-acquired by a member of the family, where they remained until sold by the estate of Georgiana Angerstein, William’s daughter-in-law, in 1947. The paintings were last sold together in 1963.
William Angerstein was a politician who served as MP for Greenwich between 1859 and 1865 and later became High Sheriff of Norfolk. He was the grandson of John Julius Angerstein, whose art collection was acquired by the British government in 1824 to form the foundation of the National Gallery, London. William was evidently a keen horseman with an idiosyncratic hunting style. In his history of the Pytchley Hunt, of which Angerstein was a member, H.O. Nethercote describes that: ‘he [Angerstein] rode nothing but weight-carrying animals of high quality…with a bit of temper of their own, they invariably were or became magnificent fencers’ (H.O. Nethercote, The Pytchley Hunt; Past and Present, London, 2nd ed., 1888, p. 255). His family’s passion for horses and history is evidenced by an unusual acquisition his brother made; after Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo the Admiral’s horse, Marengo, was captured by William, 11th Lord Petre, and subsequently sold to Lieutenant-Colonel Angerstein of the Grenadier Guards, William Angerstein’s brother. Marengo’s skeleton is now displayed at the National Army Museum, London.