John Ferneley I

Catalogue entry

T03424 SIR ROBERT LEIGHTON AFTER COURSING, WITH A GROOM AND A COUPLE OF GREYHOUNDS 1816

Oil on canvas 41 3/8 × 55 (1050 × 1397)
Inscribed ‘J. Ferneley | Melton Mowbray| 1816’ b.r.
Bequeathed by Mrs F. Ambrose Clark from the collection of the late F. Ambrose Clark through the British Sporting Art Trust 1982
Prov: Commissioned by Sir Robert Leighton; ...; Sir Jonathan North (d.1939);...; E.J. Rousuck, from whom purchased by F. Ambrose Clark by 1958; his widow Mrs F. Ambrose Clark
Exh: Tate Gallery, August–September 1982, and York City Art Gallery, March–September 1984, with other paintings from Mrs F. Ambrose Clark's Bequest (no catalogue); Paintings exhibited by the
British Sporting Art Trust, Vestey Gallery, National Horseracing Museum, Newmarket, April–December 1986 (unnumbered, repr.)
Lit: Guy Paget, The Melton Mowbray of John Ferneley, Leicester 1931, Account Books p.128, no.59; [E.J. Rousuck], The F. Ambrose Clark Collection of Sporting Paintings, privately printed, New York 1958, p.106, repr. p.107

Ferneley's Account Books (transcribed by Paget) record that he charged £26.5.0. for this picture, Sir Robert Leighton paying him £10 on account in 1816 and settling the account on 3 June 1817.

Sir Robert Leighton, 5th Bart., of Loton Park, Shropshire, was the younger son of Sir Charlton Leighton, 3rd Bart., by his second wife Emma, daughter of Sir Robert March. On his elder brother's death in 1784, he succeeded to the baronetcy. He was sheriff of Shropshire, 1786–7. He died unmarried on 21 February 1819, in his sixty-sixth year, and was succeeded by his first cousin, Major-General Baldwin Leighton (Gentleman's Magazine, 1819, i, p.280; George Edward Cokayne, Complete Baronetage, IV, 1904, p.160).

Published in:
The Tate Gallery 1982-84: Illustrated Catalogue of Acquisitions, London 1986

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