Mr Hugh Dick’s Favourite Mare and Pointer outside Humewood House, County Wicklow
This oil on canvas by John Ferneley Senior, the catalogue cover lot for the James Adam Country House Collections sale, made a hammer price of €95,000 on day two of the sale today. It had been estimated at €40,000-€60,000. The absence of a native school of equestrian painting has long surprised art historians, especially given Ireland’s close association with the turf. However, this lacuna is in part made up for by the fact that one of the finest of all English sporting painters, John Ferneley, enjoyed close links with Ireland. This work has an interesting provenance. It was commissioned by Hugh Dick Esq. MP, in July 1809 at a cost of 15 guineas; by bequest to his sister Charlotte Anna, who had married Captain William Hoare Hume of Humewood; with Leggat Brothers, London, from whom acquired by Mrs. Edward Shearson, (née Flora Josephine Shea) New York (her posthumous sale, New York, Parke-Bernet Galleries, November 6, 1955, lot 48); Jane Engelhard (1917-2004), New York philanthropist and owner of the great racehorse Nijinsky which was trained at Ballydoyle by Vincent O’Brien; by gift of Mrs Engelhard to a US private collector.