The Lambton Hounds at Feeding Time

Ferneley was one of the most fashionable and accomplished equestrian painters of the nineteenth century. The present painting, described by Guy Paget as ‘one of Ferneley’s best pictures’ (op. cit., p. 29) was commissioned in the early 1830s by Ralph John Lambton (1767-1844), M.P. for Durham, and a pre-eminent hunting figure. The Lambton hounds, first assembled under his brother William Lambton (1764-1797), drew from some of the most esteemed bloodlines in England, and continued to be amongst the most celebrated hounds under Ralph’s management. The hounds were looked after by the gentleman at the kennel door, identified as the feeder Fenwick Hunnum, whose authority is made clear. The artist has paid meticulous attention to each hound's markings, stance, and expression and yet they are subsumed within the collective identity of the pack. The scene articulates the structures of pedigree, training, and hierarchy upon which a great pack depended.

In a review of the 1833 exhibition, the New Sporting Magazine lamented the poor position it was hung in ‘over the door in the room to the right’, but praised its unique position in the development of sporting art: ‘This picture was very much admired…there is nothing of this description extant in the sporting world’ (op. cit.).