Richard Ansdell R.A.

The present work was painted for the 14th Earl of Derby, Edward Smith-Stanley, who was born in 1799 at Knowsley Park, the family seat of the Earls of Derby since the Earldom’s creation in 1485.  Knowsley Park is located in Prescott, Lancashire in Northwestern England, which is near the Scottish border and surrounded by terrain much like that seen in the present work.  Lord Stanley was a powerful and successful politician, elected to serve as Prime Minister three times, and still holds the record as England’s longest serving leader of the Conservative party.  His other passions aside from politics (and his interest in Greek verse) were hunting and horse racing.  He came by these interests naturally: the famed Derby horse race, founded in 1780, was named for the 12th Earl, and his father the 13th Earl, who was President of the Zoological Society from 1831 to 1851, was close to Ansdell, and commissioned from him a large work depicting African dik-diks as well another work, similar in size to King of the Herd, called Wild Ass and Zebras in a Landscape (sold in these rooms, June 1, 2000).  Certainly, the subject of the present work would have appealed to Lord Stanley’s avid hunting interest, as a visual representation of the most prized quarry in Lancashire, the red deer, hunted on horseback with deerhounds, by the traditional means of coursing or stalking.   In coursing, deerhounds are brought as close as possible to the deer, and then released to run their quarry down by speed.  In stalking, the deerhound would be slipped at close range, after the deer had been shot, so that the deerhound could pull down the wounded deer in even less time.

Ansdell found great inspiration in the tribulations of the stag, seen here leading his herd (which includes both red deer, seen at right, and fallow deer, with the flattened horns, at left) amid the chilling mists and precipitous rocks.  The far off valley, darkening to a deep blue, presents the perfect backdrop to the peaceable herd.  As the smaller animals gather around the stag deferentially, the perspective makes the King seem even more enormous, potent and virile. The distant vista highlights the artist’s rendering of the rising mists, creating a powerful scene of the majestic natural world, glimpsed without human intrusion.  The tender green of the distant trees, a few molted antlers lying at lower right, and the wet ground indicate that spring is on its way, and the herd has survived another harsh Northern winter.