John Frederick Herring Snr. (1795-1865) and John Frederick Herring Jnr. (1815-1907)

This impressive hunting scene was commissioned by James Hutchinson to hang at Cowley Manor (fig. 1), his newly completed house south of Cheltenham. Hutchinson was a prosperous stockbroker, head of J. Hutchinson & Sons and for eighteen years the chairman of the committee of the Stock Exchange. It was one of a group of Herring compositions painted at Cowley Manor, which included two stable scenes and two sets of small shooting and farmyard scenes. The group were offered for sale at Sotheby's in November 1966 by Hutchinson's grandson and granddaughter.

Cowley Manor, built in about 1695 and remodelled in 1790, was leased by Hutchinson in 1853. He subsequently bought the freehold. At first Hutchinson contemplated modernising the old house, but he finally decided to demolish most of it and commissioned George Somers Clarke to build him a new mansion. For Somers Clarke, who had been a pupil of Sir Charles Barry, this was a first commission for a major country house and he produced a splendid Italianate building with an impressive colonnaded south front. Initial work was completed by 1860 but a separate phase began which included the addition of an Oriental room and a music room. Following Hutchinson's death in 1873 the estate of 1,870 acres went through several hands before passing finally to the industrialist James Horlick who made extensive alterations.

The commission of the Herrings coincided not only with Hutchinson's new house, but also with the founding in 1858 of the Cotswold Hunt which emerged out of Lord FitzHardinge's Berkeley hounds which had hunted with him from 1807 to 1857 over a vast area from Berkeley Castle to Charing Cross. The first Master of the new hunt was Gregor Colmore who is shown to the right on a grey hunter, Hutchinson is to his right on a bay hunter and in the foreground is the professional huntsman is charge of the hounds.

John Frederick Herring Senior spent the last twelve years of his life in Kent where he rented Meopham Park near Tonbridge, which stood in thirty acres of grounds with copious outbuildings. He concentrated mainly on genre subjects and worked particularly closely with his son, Charles, who was his paid assistant but who died sadly young in 1856. It is said that there was a rift between Herring Senior and his eldest son, but the only evidence for this is that he was not mentioned in Herring's will and this may well have been because he was well enough established himself. In his monograph, J.F. Herring & Sons, Oliver Beckett certainly considers that Herring Junior assisted his father and this seems particularly likely following the death of Charles. The particularly high quality of the painting of the hounds in the present work suggests the participation of Herring Senior.