Seizing the reins

He spent 40 years in Doncaster (where he depicted 33 successive St Leger winners), exhibited at the Royal Academy and undertook commissions for George IV, Queen Victoria and Duchess of Kent. Financially secure after years of struggle, Herring spent the last 12 years of his life in comfort and ease in Kent. A reminder of the extraordinary life of the coachman-painter came at the £1.9m, 1,565-lot spring sale at Tennants in Leyburn, where a work by Herring Snr (his son, John Frederick Herring Jnr was also a serious and respected artist) went for a premium inclusive £64,250.

It depicts Discount, winner of the 1844 Grand National, standing in an extensive summer landscape with “jockey up”. According to my records, Discount won the National at odds of 5/1 and the jockey was called Crickmere.

A local topographical scene, Black Hill Farm, Langbar, by Yorkshire-based Impressionist Herbert Royle (1870-1958) went for £4,700 in a wide-ranging sale which saw a pair of Staffordshire Pottery rabbits munching lettuce, circa 1870, go for an above estimate £6,460.

A 300-year-old Chinese cup made from rhinoceros horn (too old to worry Defra) went for £82,950 against an estimate of up to £50,000; a diamond solitaire ring sold has gone to Australia after being bought for £28,200; and a modern 18 caret white gold Patek Philippe wristwatch made £7,050.

Back to Herring the Elder for a moment. His moment of posthumous glory came at Sotheby’s in New York in 1996, when his 1835 canvas The Start of the Epsom Derby went for an astonishing £1,630,000, two and a half times more than expected. Not bad for a Yorkshire coach driver.

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