JOHN FERNELEY SNR (1782-1860) Mr Hugh Dick's Favourite...
JOHN FERNELEY SNR (1782-1860)
Mr Hugh Dick's Favourite Mare and Pointer outside Humewood House, County Wicklow
Oil on canvas, 100 x 125cm
Signed ‘J. Ferneley Pinx.’ and dated 1809 (lower right)
Literature: Major Guy Paget DL, The Melton Mowbray of John Ferneley (Leicester, 1931) under the artist's account book no. 17 (unpaginated); Robert Fountain, John Ferneley (1782-1860): Catalogue of Paintings Chronologically by Subject (British Sporting Art Trust, online, updated December 2015) reference number A.09.017.001; James Horan, Humewood (Kinsale, Gandon Editions, 2018) illustrated page 27.
Provenance: Commissioned by Hugh Dick Esq. MP, in July 1809 at a cost of 15 guineas; by bequest to his sister Charlotte Anna, who had married Captain William Hoare Hume of Humewood; with Leggat Brothers, London, from whom acquired by Mrs. Edward Shearson, (née Flora Josephine Shea) New York (her posthumous sale, New York, Parke-Bernet Galleries, November 6, 1955, lot 48); Jane Engelhard (1917-2004), New York philanthropist and owner of the great racehorse Nijinsky which was trained at Ballydoyle by Vincent O'Brien; by gift of Mrs Engelhard to a US private collector.
The absence of a native school of equestrian painting has long surprised art historians, especially given Ireland’s close association with the turf. However, this lacuna is in part made up for by the fact that one of the finest of all English sporting painters, John Ferneley, enjoyed close links with Ireland. This was noted by Anne Crookshank and the Knight of Glin: ‘It should be remembered that the great English horse painter John Ferneley of Melton Mobray, paid four visits to Ireland, the first in 1808 when he had introductions from the fifth Duke of Rutland, whose father had been Lord Lieutenant. Ferneley returned for long visits in 1810, 1811 and 1812’. This, one of the finest works daring from his first visit to Ireland, is also invaluable for its depiction of the old house at Humewood, County Wicklow. It was used to illustrate the Georgian house in James Horan’s book on the restoration of the gothic mansion which replaced it.
John Ferneley was born at Thrussington in Leicestershire, in the midst of the English Hunting Shires. His precocity attracted the attention of the Duke of Rutland, who persuaded his wheelwright father to apprentice him to the equestrian painter Ben Marshall. The latter became a life-long friend as well as teacher. Little of Ben Marshall's broad and vigorous technique is evident in his pupil's later free and refined style, though some of Ferneley's early works, such as those painted on his visits to Ireland between 1808 and 1812, have echoes of his master.
Ferneley first arrived in Ireland in late 1808 and stayed about a year, returning to Thrussington in November 1809. He clearly found the country congenial and won significant commissions, painting for such distinguished patrons as the Lords Lismore and Rossmore, the Earl of Belmore and the Trenches and O’Callaghans. He contrived to earn and save £180, enough to pay for his marriage to Sally Kettle shortly after his return to England. They stayed in England only a few weeks, returning to Ireland in the spring of 1810, where they were received with generosity and affection by his clients of the previous year. In five months he amassed a small fortune of over £200.
Ferneley is without question the finest sporting artist to have worked in Ireland, and yet few indeed of his paintings of this prolific period survive or at least can be identified today. There are still two such in the collection of the Earl of Belmore at Castle Coole, which again show ponies, called ‘Plenipo’ and ‘Buffer’. On his return, Ferneley rapidly established a distinguished English and Scottish clientele, and he and John Herring were the sporting painters par excellence in the period 1810-1850. Ferneley was himself a keen sportsman, and he recounts in his (eccentrically spelled) letters his exploits in the field. Throughout most of his working life he kept a meticulous Book of Accounts, which enables much of his work to be traced and identified. This makes him the best-documented – not to say one of the most satisfying – sporting artists in the heyday of hunting. He died on 3 June 1860, and was buried at Thrussington. His sons, John Junior and Claude Lorraine, were competent sporting painters, though not in the same exalted class as their father.
Hugh Dick MP, who commissioned this painting, was born in 1780, the second son of Samuel Dick, East India proprietor and merchant, of Dublin and Charlotte, daughter of Nicholas Forster of Tullaghan, County Monaghan; he was the younger brother of Quintin Dick, MP. He died, unmarried, on 10 August 1830. One of the fourth generation of a Scottish family settled in County Antrim, Hugh Dick's grandfather, Quintin Dick of Nenagh, County Tipperary, had brought his family to Dublin, where his father, Samuel, flourished as a linen merchant and rose to become deputy governor (1796) and governor (1797-99) of the Bank of Ireland. He died in 1802 with property ‘estimated at upwards of £400,000’.
Dick, who had been raised to play a prominent role in the family business, now took premises at 13 Linen Hall Street and, reflecting his younger brother William Forster Dick’s involvement, they traded briefly as Dick (Hugh, William) and Company. Hugh did not share his father’s involvement in banking and insurance, but he became a director of the Corn Exchange Building Company of Dublin (1815-25) and from 1819-29 served as a merchant trustee of the Royal Exchange and member of the ‘Society of the Ouzel Galley’ – a merchant-traders’ cartel. Dick’s return as Member of Parliament for Maldon, where he topped the poll in absentia in December 1827, as locum for his elder brother Quintin, then Member for Orford, on the 3rd Marquess of Hertford’s interest, was unexpected and hurriedly organized by Quintin, following the death of George Allanson Winn, who had defeated him there in a costly contest in June 1826. Dick died of a stroke at his Dublin home, Violet Hill House, Raheny (now part of Beaumont Hospital) in August 1830.
Hugh Dick’s ‘favourite mare and pointer’ are shown in front of his sister’s new home of Humewood, County Wicklow. Charlotte Anna Dick had married William Hoare Hume at Bath on 24 November 1804 and appropriately the picture was bequeathed to the Humes when Hugh Dick died without a direct heir. Hume, was an MP in the Dublin Parliament, having replaced his father (who had been killed by rebels in 1798), in the County Wicklow seat. Closely connected with the Fitzwilliam interest of nearby Coolatin, he voted against Union, though later took his seat, again for Wicklow, in the Westminster parliament.
The Georgian House of Humewood as shown in the background was built on the estate acquired by Thomas Hume (d. 1718), which had originally been based on a fifteenth-century castle. It comprised a seven-bay two-storey house with distinctive large hexagonal rooms on each side of the frontage, rather like Coolderry in County Monaghan (demolished), which belonged to cousins of the family, and the Dick’s own Violet Hill House near Dublin; all three probably were constructed about the same time, and possibly designed by the same architect. A nice detail is the eagle trophy on the roofline above the pedimented entrance door. Fernley’s painting is a rare depiction of the charming Georgian house which was replaced by the very much larger (if rather less charming) Humewood Castle, a true Victorian extravaganza built in rebarbative Gothic style between 1867 and 1870, and recently restored to its original splendour.
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JOHN FERNELEY SNR (1782-1860)
Mr Hugh Dick's Favourite Mare and Pointer outside Humewood House, County Wicklow
Oil on canvas, 100 x 125cm
Signed ‘J. Ferneley Pinx.’ and dated 1809 (lower right)
Literature: Major Guy Paget DL, The Melton Mowbray of John Ferneley (Leicester, 1931) under the artist's account book no. 17 (unpaginated); Robert Fountain, John Ferneley (1782-1860): Catalogue of Paintings Chronologically by Subject (British Sporting Art Trust, online, updated December 2015) reference number A.09.017.001; James Horan, Humewood (Kinsale, Gandon Editions, 2018) illustrated page 27.
Provenance: Commissioned by Hugh Dick Esq. MP, in July 1809 at a cost of 15 guineas; by bequest to his sister Charlotte Anna, who had married Captain William Hoare Hume of Humewood; with Leggat Brothers, London, from whom acquired by Mrs. Edward Shearson, (née Flora Josephine Shea) New York (her posthumous sale, New York, Parke-Bernet Galleries, November 6, 1955, lot 48); Jane Engelhard (1917-2004), New York philanthropist and owner of the great racehorse Nijinsky which was trained at Ballydoyle by Vincent O'Brien; by gift of Mrs Engelhard to a US private collector.
The absence of a native school of equestrian painting has long surprised art historians, especially given Ireland’s close association with the turf. However, this lacuna is in part made up for by the fact that one of the finest of all English sporting painters, John Ferneley, enjoyed close links with Ireland. This was noted by Anne Crookshank and the Knight of Glin: ‘It should be remembered that the great English horse painter John Ferneley of Melton Mobray, paid four visits to Ireland, the first in 1808 when he had introductions from the fifth Duke of Rutland, whose father had been Lord Lieutenant. Ferneley returned for long visits in 1810, 1811 and 1812’. This, one of the finest works daring from his first visit to Ireland, is also invaluable for its depiction of the old house at Humewood, County Wicklow. It was used to illustrate the Georgian house in James Horan’s book on the restoration of the gothic mansion which replaced it.
John Ferneley was born at Thrussington in Leicestershire, in the midst of the English Hunting Shires. His precocity attracted the attention of the Duke of Rutland, who persuaded his wheelwright father to apprentice him to the equestrian painter Ben Marshall. The latter became a life-long friend as well as teacher. Little of Ben Marshall's broad and vigorous technique is evident in his pupil's later free and refined style, though some of Ferneley's early works, such as those painted on his visits to Ireland between 1808 and 1812, have echoes of his master.
Ferneley first arrived in Ireland in late 1808 and stayed about a year, returning to Thrussington in November 1809. He clearly found the country congenial and won significant commissions, painting for such distinguished patrons as the Lords Lismore and Rossmore, the Earl of Belmore and the Trenches and O’Callaghans. He contrived to earn and save £180, enough to pay for his marriage to Sally Kettle shortly after his return to England. They stayed in England only a few weeks, returning to Ireland in the spring of 1810, where they were received with generosity and affection by his clients of the previous year. In five months he amassed a small fortune of over £200.
Ferneley is without question the finest sporting artist to have worked in Ireland, and yet few indeed of his paintings of this prolific period survive or at least can be identified today. There are still two such in the collection of the Earl of Belmore at Castle Coole, which again show ponies, called ‘Plenipo’ and ‘Buffer’. On his return, Ferneley rapidly established a distinguished English and Scottish clientele, and he and John Herring were the sporting painters par excellence in the period 1810-1850. Ferneley was himself a keen sportsman, and he recounts in his (eccentrically spelled) letters his exploits in the field. Throughout most of his working life he kept a meticulous Book of Accounts, which enables much of his work to be traced and identified. This makes him the best-documented – not to say one of the most satisfying – sporting artists in the heyday of hunting. He died on 3 June 1860, and was buried at Thrussington. His sons, John Junior and Claude Lorraine, were competent sporting painters, though not in the same exalted class as their father.
Hugh Dick MP, who commissioned this painting, was born in 1780, the second son of Samuel Dick, East India proprietor and merchant, of Dublin and Charlotte, daughter of Nicholas Forster of Tullaghan, County Monaghan; he was the younger brother of Quintin Dick, MP. He died, unmarried, on 10 August 1830. One of the fourth generation of a Scottish family settled in County Antrim, Hugh Dick's grandfather, Quintin Dick of Nenagh, County Tipperary, had brought his family to Dublin, where his father, Samuel, flourished as a linen merchant and rose to become deputy governor (1796) and governor (1797-99) of the Bank of Ireland. He died in 1802 with property ‘estimated at upwards of £400,000’.
Dick, who had been raised to play a prominent role in the family business, now took premises at 13 Linen Hall Street and, reflecting his younger brother William Forster Dick’s involvement, they traded briefly as Dick (Hugh, William) and Company. Hugh did not share his father’s involvement in banking and insurance, but he became a director of the Corn Exchange Building Company of Dublin (1815-25) and from 1819-29 served as a merchant trustee of the Royal Exchange and member of the ‘Society of the Ouzel Galley’ – a merchant-traders’ cartel. Dick’s return as Member of Parliament for Maldon, where he topped the poll in absentia in December 1827, as locum for his elder brother Quintin, then Member for Orford, on the 3rd Marquess of Hertford’s interest, was unexpected and hurriedly organized by Quintin, following the death of George Allanson Winn, who had defeated him there in a costly contest in June 1826. Dick died of a stroke at his Dublin home, Violet Hill House, Raheny (now part of Beaumont Hospital) in August 1830.
Hugh Dick’s ‘favourite mare and pointer’ are shown in front of his sister’s new home of Humewood, County Wicklow. Charlotte Anna Dick had married William Hoare Hume at Bath on 24 November 1804 and appropriately the picture was bequeathed to the Humes when Hugh Dick died without a direct heir. Hume, was an MP in the Dublin Parliament, having replaced his father (who had been killed by rebels in 1798), in the County Wicklow seat. Closely connected with the Fitzwilliam interest of nearby Coolatin, he voted against Union, though later took his seat, again for Wicklow, in the Westminster parliament.
The Georgian House of Humewood as shown in the background was built on the estate acquired by Thomas Hume (d. 1718), which had originally been based on a fifteenth-century castle. It comprised a seven-bay two-storey house with distinctive large hexagonal rooms on each side of the frontage, rather like Coolderry in County Monaghan (demolished), which belonged to cousins of the family, and the Dick’s own Violet Hill House near Dublin; all three probably were constructed about the same time, and possibly designed by the same architect. A nice detail is the eagle trophy on the roofline above the pedimented entrance door. Fernley’s painting is a rare depiction of the charming Georgian house which was replaced by the very much larger (if rather less charming) Humewood Castle, a true Victorian extravaganza built in rebarbative Gothic style between 1867 and 1870, and recently restored to its original splendour.
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