NATHAN THEODORE FIELDING (SOWERBY, NEAR HALIFAX 1747-C. 1814? LIVERPOOL)

This picture and the following lot record the extensive estates of George Stansfeld (1726-1805). A wealthy wool merchant, Stansfeld had inherited the house from his grandfather in 1743, and had built up his estate to the vast panorama of farmland, cottages and drying fields, which Fielding depicts. After establishing himself on the estate, Stansfeld began the construction of a new house from 1749 onwards. Field House, shown at the centre of the composition, was built adjacent to the Old Hall, which can be seen on its left, while the large stable blocks were constructed to the right. Beyond the estate, the roof-tops of the town of Sowerby can be seen beneath the brow of a hill on which stands the Church of St. Peter’s, built under the patronage of the Stansfeld family and completed in 1763.
Nathan Theodore Fielding was born in Sowerby and, before moving to London in 1788, enjoyed a prosperous career working for the local gentry. These views, as ‘portraits’ of the Stansfeld estate, were compositions regularly commissioned by wealthy landowners during the 18th century. As the century progressed and the Acts of Enclosure saw more land entering into the hands of an increasingly small number of men, patrons sought to commission estate portraits which situated their estates more naturally into their surroundings, to ‘suggest not only the beneficent wisdom of a single proprietor, but also the justice of [the]…social structure’ (D. Solkin, Richard Wilson: The Landscapes of Reaction, exhibition catalogue, London, 1982, pp. 113-114).