拍品專文
This is the illustration to Shakespeare's Macbeth, Act II, scene iv, in which Lord Ross and an old man talk about the portents preceding King Duncan's murder:
Ross: And Duncan's horses (a thing most strange and certain)
Beauteous, and swift, the minions of their race,
Turn'd wild in nature, broke their stalls, flung out,
Contending 'gainst obedience, as they would
Make war with mankind
Old Man: 'Tis said they ate each other
Ross: They did so; to the amazement of mine eyes,
that look'd upon't
The horses are shown dashing out of a closely observed Romanesque doorway, snapping at each other's heads. Just as, some seventy years earlier, George Stubbs had sought to elevate the genre of horse painting to that of historical subjects with his pictures of Hercules and Achelous and Phaeton and the Chariot of the Sun, and Sawrey Gilpin similarly with his pictures of Gulliver and the Houyhnhnms and The Election of Darius, so too seems Herring to have tried to elevate the status of his art with works such as this one and his various depictions of Mazeppa, an illustration to Byron's poem, a pair of which he had painted in 1833 (Tate Gallery) and a later version of one of which was exhibited at the Society of British Artists, 1843, the same year as he exhibited two versions of Duncan's Horses. The later version of Mazeppa dated 1842 was sold by Sotheby's 12 July 1992, lot 105, #210,000.
In the 1840's Herring became a protégé of Alderman Copeland who gave the artist lodgings on his estate in Essex and in return for carrying out some commissions for Copeland the Alderman took up 'bills amounting to some #400' on his behalf.
Ross: And Duncan's horses (a thing most strange and certain)
Beauteous, and swift, the minions of their race,
Turn'd wild in nature, broke their stalls, flung out,
Contending 'gainst obedience, as they would
Make war with mankind
Old Man: 'Tis said they ate each other
Ross: They did so; to the amazement of mine eyes,
that look'd upon't
The horses are shown dashing out of a closely observed Romanesque doorway, snapping at each other's heads. Just as, some seventy years earlier, George Stubbs had sought to elevate the genre of horse painting to that of historical subjects with his pictures of Hercules and Achelous and Phaeton and the Chariot of the Sun, and Sawrey Gilpin similarly with his pictures of Gulliver and the Houyhnhnms and The Election of Darius, so too seems Herring to have tried to elevate the status of his art with works such as this one and his various depictions of Mazeppa, an illustration to Byron's poem, a pair of which he had painted in 1833 (Tate Gallery) and a later version of one of which was exhibited at the Society of British Artists, 1843, the same year as he exhibited two versions of Duncan's Horses. The later version of Mazeppa dated 1842 was sold by Sotheby's 12 July 1992, lot 105, #210,000.
In the 1840's Herring became a protégé of Alderman Copeland who gave the artist lodgings on his estate in Essex and in return for carrying out some commissions for Copeland the Alderman took up 'bills amounting to some #400' on his behalf.