Old Master Paintings
Old Master Paintings
Property from a Hampshire Private Collection
John Ferneley Snr.
The Start of the Billesdon Coplow Run, 1800
Lot Closed
April 6, 03:33 PM GMT
Estimate
6,000 - 8,000 GBP
Lot Details
Description
Property from a Hampshire Private Collection
John Ferneley Snr.
Thrussington, Leics 1782 - 1860 Melton Mowbray, Leics
The Start of the Billesdon Coplow Run, 1800
indistinctly inscribed lower right
oil on canvas
unframed: 39.1 x 213.6 cm.; 15⅜ x 84⅛ in.
framed: 48.6 x 222.9 cm.; 19⅛ x 87¾ in.
By whom sold, London, Christie's, 31 May 1922, lot 74 (as John Maddocks), for 30 Guineas to Gooden and Fox;
The Leicestershire: Lords Jersey, Forester, Sefton and Sir John Shelley, Bt.;
Bought from a coal merchant by a Leicester dealer, who passed it on to Pawsey and Payne, London;
From whom acquired by Major Guy Paget;
Thence by descent to his son J.W. Paget;
By whom offered, London, Christie's, 16 April 1982, lot 17, where unsold.
National Trust, 1937 (both according to the 1982 catalogue, see Provenance);
Hull, Ferens Art Gallery, Exhibition of Sporting Pictures, June 1949, no. 44;
Leicester, Festival Exhibition, Leicestershire Hunting Pictures, 1951, no. 5 (with incorrect measurements).
This scene depicts the celebrated run of the Quorn Hounds, one of the world's oldest fox hunting packs, under Hugo Merynell's Mastership on 24 February 1800, which covered 28 miles in two hours and fifteen minutes, from Billesdon Coplow - a wooded knoll and conspicuous landmark in east Leicestershire - to Enderby Gorse. The event was celebrated in a poem by eye-witness, Robert Lowth:
'With the wind at north-east, forbiddingly keen,
The Coplow of Billesdon ne'er witness'd, I ween,
Two hundred such horses and men, at a burst,
All determin'd to ride - each resolv'd to be first ...'
Ferneley painted two other versions of the start of the run: one owned by the Dukes of Rutland; and another by Captain Gilbey. It was John Henry Manners, 5th Duke of Rutland, who first commissioned Ferneley, then a young wheelwright decorating the sides of carriages, to paint a long, narrow scene of the famous Run, the start of which the artist had also seen for himself. The present version was formerly owned by the author of Ferneley's monograph, Major Guy Paget.