John Frederick Herring

JOHN FREDERICK HERRING (England, 1795 - 1865).
"Stable".
Oil on panel.
Signed in the lower margin.
Size: 15 x 20 cm; 32 x 37 cm (frame).
This work is part of a genre that was very popular in 19th century England, paintings of horses in country or genre settings, even delving into the psychology of the animal portrayed. As a result, such works usually present, as we see here, a clear, simple, classical composition with the animal in profile in the centre, at a large size, in a post-Romantic landscape setting. The painter's attention is focused on the description of the animal's anatomy, the warm glow of its coat and its bearing, but also on giving it a certain humanity in its gaze.
John Frederick Herring was a painter, engraver and coachman in Victorian England. He is known as the painter of the "Pharaoh's Chariot Horses" of 1848. Herring, born in 1795, was the son of a London merchant of Dutch descent, who had been born abroad in America. The first eighteen years of Herring's life were spent in London, England, where his main interests were drawing and horses. In 1814, at the age of 18, he moved to Doncaster in the north of England.