Barbara Latham was born in Walpole, Massachusetts and raised in Norwich, Connecticut. She studied at the Norwich Free Academy, and later attended Pratt Institute, graduating in 1919. Latham then studied at the Art Students League’s summer school in Woodstock, New York, with modernist painter Andrew Dasburg.

Latham began her career as a commercial artist in New York, working for the Norcross Publishing Company. She also did illustrations for Forum magazine and the New York Times Sunday magazine. Latham was an adventurous woman, especially for her time; she traveled extensively to gather material, including a bicycle trip through Brittany with a friend.

In 1925, Latham went to Taos, New Mexico, to work on greeting card illustrations. There, she met artist Howard Cook, who was also looking for illustration ideas. Cook and Latham married in 1927. For several years, they traveled together, including trips to Mexico, Paris, Connecticut and the Deep South. They settled near Taos in 1933, and moved to Santa Fe in 1976.

Latham created many prints and paintings of New Mexico subjects, such as the Taos landscape, and genre scenes depicting rural life. She also illustrated children’s books. The American Institute of Graphic Arts chose her book Maggie as one of the best books from the period of 1945 to 1950.

After World War II, Latham’s work became more abstract. With minimal backgrounds and pure, bright colors, her work during this time had a new mood. She experimented with surrealism, emphasizing the interplay of shapes and colors.

Her one-woman exhibitions include Witte Memorial Museum, Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, Roswell museum, and Weyhe Gallery. Her work is included in numerous private and public collections, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Library of Congress.

Willard Clark called himself a craftsman, rather than an artist. Though he enjoyed talking about carving, he refused to give interviews. As a result, we know little about him, but he left a legacy of admirable, highly sought-after prints.

Clark was born in Boston, and raised in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where his father was president of General Motors. Throughout his youth, he traveled between South America, and the United States. Thanks to his multi-cultural upbringing, Clark felt completely at home when he arrived in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He was on his way to California, but he ended up staying in Santa Fe, inspired by the artists, architecture, Spanish, and southwestern landscape.

He had studied art at the Grand Central Gallery in New York, and was interested in becoming a portrait painter. In Santa Fe, though, Clark discovered that there was no local print shop, so he opened a business. For decades, he created advertisements, letterhead, and signs; printshop business thrived, even through the depression. In his spare time, Clark created woodblock prints of southwestern scenes. His commercial design work was considered quintessentially Santa Fe, and his wood engravings and woodblock prints convey the essence of the city in the 1920’s and 1930’s.

After Pearl Harbor, Clark closed the printing shop and took a more secure position as a machinist at the National Laboratory in Los Alamos. Clark remained with the lab until his retirement in the 1970’s.

During his retirement, Clark returned to wood carving. He created wood engravings of exceptional detail which reflected the charm of old Santa Fe. In 1988, he began creating a book of prints and reflections called Recuerdos de Santa Fe. Clark was recognized by the Museum of Fine Arts of New Mexico with a retrospective show in 1992, just before his death.

Excerpt from Animal and Sporting Artists in America by F. Turner Reuter, Jr. © 2008:

DeLattre was born in St. Omer, France, in 1801. He was largely self-taught. He was a prolific painter of animals and genre pictures, but did not become interested in equine portraiture until his first visit to the United States, beginning in 1836. His initial efforts, in Philadelphia, PA, did not meet with great success; in 1839 he received instruction from Edward Troye (qv) and was able to reverse his early misfortune. After spending much of the 1840s in France DeLattre returned to the United States in 1849 and established himself in Philadelphia as an equestrian artist, showing particular skill in the depiction of the trotting horse. He returned to France permanently in 1856. DeLattre provided illustrations of horses for several sporting publications of the time. His Boston, a portrait of a well-known thoroughbred, appeared in the American Turf Register of December 1842, The Spirit of the Times on 7 March 1840, the Horses of America in 1857, and volume I of Wallace’s American Stud Book. Over the course of his career, his signature varied; most common was "DeLattre," although "Delattre" and "DELATTRE" were also used.

In 1852 he exhibited Portrait of a Horse in a Stable, Horse and Dog, Portrait of a Terrier and Portrait of Horses, Goats &c at the National Academy of Design in New York City. The following year he exhibited Portrait of a Horse at the same institution. His work was also shown at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, including such works as his Study of a Donkey in 1849, French Mastiff and Portrait of the Horse Dutchman in 1850, and Trotting Horse Tom in 1854. He also exhibited at the Maryland Historical Society in Baltimore and at the Paris Salon in France. His Zachary Taylor and Mac, a painting of a trotting race, was owned by the noted American collector Harry T. Peters of New York City and Orange, VA. The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond has his Portrait of the Artist Driving a Pair of Horses, painted in 1852; his Trotter and Driver on Union Raceway, Long Island City, New York, done around 1850; and Chestnut Hunter with Groom, executed in 1836. Several of his works are listed in the 1945 portraiture catalogue of the Virginia Historical Society in Richmond, including Draft Horse, Portsmouth and Dog, and Dutchman. The trotting horse Dutchman was noted for breaking the record for three miles at the Beacon Course in Hoboken, NJ, in 1850. The painting was reproduced by the lithographer Nathaniel Currier (qv), who seven years later went into partnership with James Merritt Ives (qv) to form Currier & Ives (qv).

DeLattre died in Paris, France, in June of 1876.

Excerpt from Animal and Sporting Artists in America by F. Turner Reuter, Jr. © 2008:

Tait was born near Liverpool, England, on 5 August 1819. He was self-taught. He began working for Agnew’s, an art dealer in Manchester, England, at the age of twelve. While there he taught himself drawing and painting, going to the Royal Manchester Institute to sketch plaster casts of classical statuary. He left Agnew’s to marry and work on his own in 1838, and taught himself lithography in the following year. He worked in Manchester and Liverpool for several years, where he drew and lithographed a variety of subjects; in 1845 he published a volume of lithographs entitled Views on the Manchester and Leeds Railway, capitalizing on the strong public interest in railroads then extant in Britain. With the collapse of this interest in 1848, he turned to oil painting.

In 1850, suffering from a lack of contacts among the patrons of the arts in England, Tait immigrated to the United States and settled in New York City. He quickly involved himself with the New York City art community, possibly working for a time in William T. Ranney’s (qv) studio. From time to time, Tait collaborated with other artists, including James M. Hart (qv), with whom he worked as early as 1859. Tait painted Western subjects, although he never went West himself. One of these, One Rubbed Out, attracted the attention of the lithographer Nathaniel Currier (qv); his firm, which later became Currier & Ives (qv), published examples of Tait’s work until 1865. During the 1850s Tait painted waterfowl in New Jersey and on Long Island. He also received commissions to paint gun dogs and champion livestock. Among his earliest supporters and patrons was John Osborn, a prosperous liquor and wine merchant with an office in Manhattan and a residence in Brooklyn, NY; Osborn not only supported Tait throughout most of his career, but also became a lifelong friend. Another important patron for the artist was Alexander T. Stewart of New York City, a collector known most for his acquisition of Marie-Roasalie (Roas) Bonheur’s Horse Fair in 1857; this painting, as well as works by other important French artists, hung in Stewart’s private art gallery along side his acquisition of Tait’s Snowed In of 1877, depicting a dog and shepherd rescuing sheep.

Tait first went to the Adirondacks in upstate New York in 1851 in order to help his sister-in-law, who had been abandoned by his brother Augustus. Finding an abundance of fish and game in the region, he returned regularly for the rest of his life; he stayed first in the Chateaugay Lakes region. A financial dispute in 1855 and the resulting trial in 1856 made him unwelcome there, but he worked in various regions of the Adirondacks throughout his career. He sketched wildfowl and waterfowl shooting, deer hunting, and angling scenes there, while continuing to live in New York City in order to market his paintings. By the late 1850s and early 1860s Tait had regular patrons who commissioned and purchased Adirondack sporting and farm scenes. In 1858 he contributed work to the sale at the National Academy of Design in New York City for the benefit of Ranney’s widow; he also helped William Sidney Mount (qv), who organized the sale, to complete paintings left uncompleted in Ranney’s studio, such as Retrieving, a wingshooting scene. This sale was the foundation of the Artists Fund Society in New York City. In 1860 he moved to Morrisania, NY, and left sales in the hands of various agents. Shortly afterward Louis Prang (qv), a Boston lithographer, made reproductions of Tait’s work to introduce the new process of color or chromolithography to the public (Currier & Ives lithographs were hand-colored). This was Tait’s most productive period; between 1858 and 1867 he completed fifty or more paintings every year except 1862, maintaining the consistently high standard to which he worked throughout his career. In 1869 he returned to New York City, continuing to spend his summers in the Adirondacks. From 1874 to 1877 he lived full time at a house he and his wife had built at Long Lake, NY. In 1877 he began wintering again in New York City, returning there full time after his first wife’s death in 1880. He continued to work, selling his paintings through dealers; commissions were less common. Most of his output during this period, which lasted until his death in 1905, involved compositions of domestic animals.

Tait was a member of the National Academy of Design in New York City. He showed at least one hundred and thirty nine exhibits between 1852 and 1905, rarely missing a year; examples included Duck Shooting-a Good Shot in 1852, Portrait of a Horse in 1853: Black Bear Hunting in Northern New York in 1856, Anxiety; Quail and Young in 1857, A Tight Fix: Bear Hunting in Early Winter in 1858, Woodcock Shooting in 1859, Fowls in 1860, Setters and Quail in 1861, Pigeon Shooting, Northern New York in 1862, Speckled American Brook Trout in 1863, The Regretted Shot in 1865, Mexican Dog in 1870, Racquette Lake in the Adirondacks in 1873, Ruffed Grouse in the Forest in 1876, Thoroughbreds in 1879, Still Hunting, Adirondacks in 1881, Little Pets in 1884, Jerseys, Orange Co., N. Y. in 1887, "Steady, Good Dog!" in 1890, "Please Let Us Out" in 1895, "Summer Time" in 1899, Maternal Anxiety in 1900, and On the Hillside, in 1904. He exhibited less frequently at the Boston (MA) Athenaeum beginning in 1851, showing Praire Scene (Discovering an Indian Trail) in 1851, The Second Shot in 1855, Arguing the Point, Settling the Presidency and The Wood and Golden Eye Duck in 1856, The Stag Hunt in 1858, and Chickens in 1864. He exhibited relatively few paintings at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia in the 1850s and 1860s, among them Duck Shooting over Decoys in 1856 and Quail and Young in 1864. At the Art Institute of Chicago (IL) he showed his An Unexpected Surprise in 1888 and Coming Home in 1900; in 1891 he exhibited his Going to Pasture at the Boston (MA) Art Club. He also exhibited at the Philadelphia Art Club and the Brooklyn (NY) Art Association. Tait’s Landscape with Cows, dated 1867, and Coming Home, dated 1872, were included in the exhibition entitled "Man and His Kine: A Loan Exhibition Devoted to the Theme of the Cow in American Art" held at the DeCordova Museum in Lincoln, MA, in 1972. Bear Hunt: A Tight Fix, 1856, a painting of a hunter confronting a bear, armed only with a knife, was in the exhibition of the Richard Manoogian collection at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, in 1989. Many examples of the artist’s work are reproduced in Arthur Fitzwilliam Tait: Artist in the Adirondacks, a volume comprising a biography by Warder H. Cadbury, a professor at the State University of New York at Albany, and a catalogue raisonné by Henry F. Marsh, who based his work on Tait’s checklist of paintings, which his wife, Tait’s granddaughter, inherited.

Tait’s Prairie Hunter: One Rubbed Out is in the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha, NE. The Denver (CO) Art Museum has his Landscape with Deer, one of numerous treatments of that subject. The Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, CT, has such paintings as his A Good Chance, Pointers and Quail, and American Ruffed Grouse and the Mead Art Gallery at Amherst (MA) College has his Good Dog Scotty and Adirondack Deer. His Snowed In, Dog’s Head, Autumn Morning on Raquette Lake, Otter and Speckled Trout: a Natural Fisherman, and Deer, Raquette Lake, among others, are in the Adirondack Museum in Blue Mountain Lake, NY. The National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame in Saratoga Springs, NY, has his Portrait of a Celebrated Trotting Horse and Portrait of a Dark Brown Mare. The Shelburne (VT) Museum has The Hunter’s Dilemma from 1851, Mink Trapping from 1862, Young Quail from 1864, Racquette Lake (exhibited in 1873), Deer Family from 1877, and Old Pioneer: Uncle Dan and His Pets from 1878. Other institutions holding his work include the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of the City of New York and the New-York Historical Society, all in New York City; the Pebble Hill Plantation Museum in Thomasville, GA; the Amon Carter Museum of Western Art in Fort Worth, TX; the Cleveland (OH) Museum of Art; the National Sporting Library in Middleburg, VA; the Parrish Art Museum in Southampton, NY; and the Addison Gallery of American Art at Phillips Academy in Andover, MA.

Tait died in Yonkers, NY, on 28 April 1905.

Excerpt from Animal and Sporting Artists in America by F. Turner Reuter, Jr. © 2008:

Rosseau was born in Pointe Coupée Parish, LA, on 21 September 1859. Rosseau’s family was of French descent and operated a farm, originally based on a land grant from Louis XIV in the Louisiana territory, until the outbreak of the Civil War. During the war, Rosseau’s father and two older brothers were killed; his mother had also died, and the Union General W. T. Sherman laid ruin to the family holdings during the Mississippi campaign. Rosseau and his sister were rescued by a slave and the two were raised by a family friend in Kentucky. Rosseau was educated in a private school and taught to shoot and fish by his guardian. He began working at seventeen, trying his hand at various trades to earn a living for himself and a dowry for his sister. He worked as a cowboy and cattle driver in Texas and along the Chisholm Trail from Mexico to Kansas for six years. The Panhandle of Texas in which he worked cattle was abundant in wild game, especially the Texas panther, or mountain lion, which prompted Rosseau in 1878 to send for hounds from Louisiana of the same French bloodlines originally from Normandy, the Franc Comptoise, that his ancestors had imported at the time of the original land grant. Rosseau developed a pack with these hounds and hunted the panther for a number of years, until he left the area in the early 1880s, at which time he gave approximately thirty couple to various local ranchmen. These hounds were, without a doubt, the first scenting pack hunted in the Southwest. Rosseau next purchased a stand of timber with the intention of entering the lumber business, but the venture failed. This did not discourage him unduly; by the time he was thirty-five he owned an import brokerage business in New Orleans, LA, which provided him with enough income that he decided to go to France to study art, leaving the company in the hands of a partner.

Instead of taking a ship across the Atlantic, Rosseau headed West from California. On the ship from San Francisco, CA, to Honolulu he met Nancy Bidwell, on whom he kept a guardian’s eye at the captain’s request and to whom he became engaged before landfall. The two stayed in Hawaii as guests of friends made on board until Bidwell’s vacation ended, at which point she returned home to Chicago, IL, and Rosseau went on to Japan and points West. After arriving in Paris, France, around 1894, he enrolled at the Académie Julian and soon thereafter married Bidwell, who had journeyed there to meet him. While there he studied under the painters Jules Lefebvre, Charles Herrmann-Léon, and Tony Robert-Fleury painting the nude figure, and winning an honorable mention for one of his paintings of this subject in 1900 at the Exposition Universelle in Paris. When his New Orleans import business partner emptied the company accounts and fled in 1898, it was Nancy’s dowry that enabled the couple to stay in France so that Rosseau could continue his studies. Not having the patience to flatter a portrait sitter, he executed a picture of Diana with two wolfhounds, which met with critical acclaim in 1903. Rosseau’s next exhibit was in 1904 at the Paris Salon, showing a painting of two setters which sold immediately. He exhibited again at the Salon in 1906 a life-size composition done from memory showing his own pack of fifteen and a half couple killing a panther in Texas, which won a third-class medal and launched his commercial career as a sporting and animal artist. Although he remained in France until 1915, Rosseau made numerous trips to the United States to exhibit and to fulfill orders for commissions, including his 1913 portrait of a pack of foxhounds belonging to Joseph B. Thomas, M.F.H, in full cry across Percy Rockefeller’s Overhills plantation in Fayetteville, NC. When he was compelled by the onset of the First World War to return to the United States permanently, he settled in Lyme, CT, and took part in the Old Lyme artists’ colony. He also spent time at the Southern estates and hunting grounds of his wealthy patrons, where he took part in upland game pursuits and executed commissions for them. Among these was Percy Rockefeller, who loaned Rosseau gun dogs for models and built a studio for the artist to use during the gunning and field trial season. In 1925 Rosseau was again commissioned by Joseph B. Thomas, this time to paint two large portraits of his pack of hounds, each of which were set at Overhills and depicts the pack working out a line in the foreground with huntsman, staff, and field in the background set among abandoned cotton fields and piney woodlands. Some of Rosseau’s paintings were reproduced as photogravures; examples include his 1923 works Pointers in the Field and English Setters in the Field, published and remarqued by Arthur Ackermann and Son of New York City in 1925, and signed in pencil by the artist. Rosseau also executed etchings in the early 1930s, preparing and striking the plates in his own studio; these images were titled and signed by the artist in ink. Examples include: Cooling Off, Bill’s Covey, and Partners. Brown & Bigelow, printers of advertising posters, prints, and calendars of St. Paul, MN, published reproductions of these three etchings.

Rosseau was a member of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, the Lotos Club in New York City, and the Lyme Art Association. He exhibited at the Paris Salon, the Lyme Art Association, and prominent galleries in New York City and elsewhere. The Orlando (FL) Museum of Art, The Columbus (OH) Museum of Art, and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts all have examples of his work. The University of Rochester (NY) Memorial Art Gallery has In the Woods; the Genessee Country Village & Museum in Mumford, NY, has Setter in an Open Field; the Hecksher Museum of Art in Huntington, NY, has his Beginning the Day: Pointer Dogs; the American Kennel Club Museum of the Dog in St. Louis, MO, has Setter in the Field; and the Columbus (OH) Museum of Art has Hunting Dogs.

Rosseau died in Fayetteville, NC, on 29 November 1937.

Munnings was born in Mendham, Suffolk, England, on 8 October, 1878. At the age of 14 he was apprenticed to Page Brothers & Company, a Norfolk lithography firm; he studied during the evenings at the Norwich School of Art. He had exhibited his work at both the Royal Institute of Watercolour Artists and the Royal Academy by the age of 21; in 1899 he sold Pike Fishing in January, which he had painted three years before, from the Royal Academy exhibition and went to the races to celebrate. The racing world, both on the track and off, inspired him, and in the following years he established himself as a painter of horses and related subjects. An accident deprived him of the use of one eye when he was in his early twenties, but he persevered; his work, including such subjects as flat racing, steeplechasing, foxhunting and Gypsies on the moors, met with critical acclaim.

He made his living painting commissioned portraits of horses–hunters with their owners, racehorses with their jockeys and the like; he was considered second only to George Stubbs among British painters of horses. He was created a Knight Commander of the Victorian Order in 1944. He also served as President of the Royal Academy from 1944 to 1949; he resigned after his strong dislike for modern art and his utter lack of patience with those who did not agree with him on this point made his position untenable. He continued to paint, although toward the end of his life his gout, which he had contracted at the age of 30, was so painful that he was unable to hold a brush. He also wrote a three-volume autobiography, consisting of An Artist’s Life, The Second Burst, and The Finish. He exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy before, during and after his presidency, showing a total of 290 paintings there during his work and six more the year after his death.

Munnings died in Dedham, Essex, England, on 17 July, 1959.

Excerpt from Animal and Sporting Artists in America by F. Turner Reuter, Jr. © 2008:

Flannery was born in Kentucky on 6 October 1898. He studied at the Art Institute of Chicago (IL); the Chicago Academy of Fine Art; and in London, England, at the Slade School with Frederic Victor Poole. He specialized in painting the thoroughbred horse and racing subjects. Having retired from a successful career in advertising and become a breeder of thoroughbreds on a small scale, he began painting purely for his own enjoyment. Not having any need to generate income with his art, he refused to paint commissioned scenes or portraits of particular horses. Noted racehorse owner John Hay Whitney surmounted this obstacle by sending the artist to his stud farm in Kentucky on the understanding that Whitney would buy anything Flannery produced; the Maryland Jockey Club obtained scenes of the Pimlico race track by a similar process.

Flannery exhibited a number of works at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, among them Broodmare Barn in 1935, The Maryland Hunt in 1940, and Interior: Racing Barn in 1952. He also exhibited at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh, PA; the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City; the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC; the Art Institute of Chicago (IL); and the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, Legion of Honor. The National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame in Saratoga Springs, NY, has his Fitzsimmons Saddling, showing the trainer James ("Sunny Jim") Fitzsimmons saddling the thoroughbred racehorse Keynote while an assistant saddles another horse in the background. Studio of the Old Master, which is in the Carnegie Institute, depicts the living room of Fitzsimmons’ training cottage near the back stretch of the Aqueduct racetrack in New York. Other institutions holding his work include the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City; the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC; the Baltimore (MD) Museum of Art; and the Toledo (OH) Museum of Art.

Flannery died in Philadelphia, PA, on 25 December 1955.

Bonheur was born in Bordeaux France, on 15 May 1827. He was the younger brother of the noted animalier painter and sculptor Marie-Rosalie (Rosa) Bonheur. He studied initially with his father, Raymond Bonheur, a drawing instructor; in 1849 he commenced study at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, France. He executed a number of paintings of animal subjects, but soon realized that his talents lay in sculpture. He modeled a variety of animals, including horses, cattle, sheep and dogs; among his best known works is Race Horse and Jockey, which was cast in bronze in several sizes by Hippolyte Peyrol, his brother-in-law and the founder who cast much of his work. He also modeled larger works, such as two stone lions for the Palais de Justice in Paris. He exhibited regularly at the Paris Salon beginning in 1848 and at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1889.

Bonheur died in Paris, France, in 1901.

Excerpt from Animal and Sporting Artists in America by F. Turner Reuter, Jr. © 2008:

Osthaus was born in Hildesheim, Hannover (now Germany), on 5 August 1858. He studied at the Royal Arts Academy in Düsseldorf, Germany, with Andreas Muller, Peter Jansen, E. von Gebhardt, Ernst Deger, and Christian Kroner. In the early 1860s Osthaus’ parents and younger siblings moved to Mexico in the employ of the Austrian Archduke Maximilian, whom Napoléon III had installed as Emperor of Mexico while the United States was distracted from foreign affairs by the Civil War; when his rule there was overthrown the Osthauses moved to Oshkosh, WI. Edmund joined them in 1883, where he shared a studio with his sister, Marie, also an artist. Shortly afterward he moved to Toledo, OH, at the invitation of David R. Locke, a local newspaperman and collector. He became chief instructor at the and complexity, from the single dog portraits on a typical twenty-four by thirty-six inch canvas to examples of impressive sizes. S. Murray Mitchell’s circa 1900 portrait of ten setters, which was six feet high and sixteen feet long and divided into three panels, and was described in the Forest and Stream edition of 28 April 1900. Oshthaus also produced a series of postcards, lithographs and calendar pictures for duPont, including every national champion from the first, Count Gladstone IV in 1896, through Monora in 1911; all were setter dogs except the 1909 winner, the pointer dog Manitoba Rap. At the persuasion of William Bruette, the editor of Forest and Stream magazine, Osthaus executed a series of eleven etchings of subjects including fox hounds, German shepherds, collies, bird dog puppies, a setter bitch and pups, as well as pointers and setters, with a limited number of impressions produced that were signed in pencil by the artist.

Osthaus was a member of the Tile Club in Toledo. He exhibited there regularly, showing such works as his Partridge Shooting and Retriever, both in 1903. At the Art Institute of Chicago (IL) he showed Still Evening in 1903 and, in 1911, Early Rambles and Setters. The Port Huron (MI) Museum of Arts and History has his Major, a portrait of a St. Bernard, and In the Field. The Toledo Museum of Art has another portrait of Major, among other works. The Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown, OH, has his Family Portrait and his Setters in a Field is at the Morris Museum of Arts and Sciences in Bernardsville, NJ. The Pebble Hill Plantation Museum in Thomasville, GA, has his oils, A Setter and a Pointer and Setters on Point. Other institutions holding his work include the National Sporting Library in Middleburg, VA; the Albany (GA) Museum of Art; and the American Kennel Club Museum of the Dog in St. Louis, MO.

Osthaus died at his hunting lodge in Marianna, FL, on 30 January 1928.

Herring was born in Surrey on 12 August, 1795, the son of a London merchant of Dutch heritage who was born in America. His great interests as a child were drawing and horses. In 1814 he moved to Doncaster, where he saw the Duke of Hamilton’s William win the St. Leger, a spectacle which so inspired him that he went home and attempted to paint the winner from memory.

In Doncaster he started out as an assistant to a painter of coach insignia and inn signs, and was soon employed as a coach driver. In his spare time he began painting portraits of horses for inn parlors, where his skills were quickly recognized by local owners of hunting and racing horses, who offered commissions and enabled him thereby to start working full time at his painting. In 1830 he moved to Newmarket, where he is thought to have been taught by Abraham Cooper. After three years there, he returned to London.

Herring was enormously successful in his lifetime, and ranks with Sir Edwin Landseer as one of the greatest animal painters of the mid-nineteenth century. He was extremely prolific, painting numerous examples of such subjects as hunting, coaching, racing, shooting and farmyard scenes. He painted eighteen Derby winners and thirty-three successive winners of the St. Leger. His paintings were tremendously popular, with many being engraved both in color and black and white for sale to his many patrons. He exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1818, as well as at the British Institution and the Royal Society of British Artists. In 1840 and 1841 he was in Paris at the invitation of the Duc d’Orleans, for whom he painted several pictures. In 1845 he was appointed Animal Painter to HRH the Duchess of Kent; soon afterwards he received a commission from Queen Victoria, who remained his patron for the rest of his life. Earlier in the century he had painted for Kings George IV and William IV. His works hang in the Tate Gallery, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin, the National Gallery of Australia in Melbourne and in many well-known English and American collections.

Herring moved to Meopham, his country estate in Kent, in 1853, remaining there for the rest of his life. Three of his eight children, his sons John Frederick Jr. (1820 – 1907), Charles (1828 – 1856) and Benjamin (1830 – 1871), were also painters; of the three Charles, who died of scarlet fever at the age of 28, is held to have had the greatest talent while John Frederick, Jr., the longest lived of any of the Herrings and who for much of his career painted in the same manner as his father and signed his work in the same way, had the greatest success.

John Frederick Herring, Sr. died at Meopham on 13 September, 1865.