Born in Blackfriars, Surrey, John Frederick senior was the son of Benjamin Herring (who was born in America under the British flag but was Dutch by descent).
Category: Arts & Collectibles
George Stubbs was the greatest of English horse painter, a master whose work stands alone, and who has had a greater influence on sporting painting throughout the world than anyone else who has lived.
With Stubbs, Munnings is one of the two great masters of sporting art and much has been written about him.
Sporting artist Alfred Munnings loved horses, the English countryside and a good stiff drink. What he didn’t like was modern art.
Round-hoof’d, short-jointed, fetlocks shag and long, broad breast, full eye,
small head and nostril wide, high crest, short ears, straight legs and passing
strong, thin mane, thick mane, broad buttock, tender hide: look, what a horse
should have he did mot lack, save a proud rider on so proud a back.
Shakespeare, Venus and Adonis
Nothing is more marvelous than sitting at a little table in the gathering dusk in the Piazza di San Marco, the guest of the six golden-bronze horses prancing away-to paradise. Then you know you are in the presence of the most immaculately beautiful creatures on the earth.
In the different world of the eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the wealthy had far more time to follow their pleasurable pursuits, not the least of which was hunting. Hunting men have always been, by the very nature of their sport, men of courage and character.