John Frederick Herring, Sen. (Blackfriars 1795-1865 Tunbridge Wells)

The present work was painted a year after Herring had moved to Meopham Park, Kent, where he lived the life of a country squire. By this time he enjoyed Royal patronage and his paintings were selling for at least fifty percent more than when he was living in London.

Beckett comments on this period of his career: 'Herring's style by this time, showed a greater suavity of brushwork; the veins and tendons of his horses' limbs were suggested rather than anatomised. And he clearly had benefited from his contact with Landseer in the ability to render atmospheric perspective ..... there is a new breadth and spaciousness in his approach to landscape which produced some of his finest work'. (O. Beckett, J.F. Herring & Sons, London, 1981, p. 64.)