John Frederick Herring Jnr

JOHN FREDERICK HERRING JNR Doncaster 1821 - 1907 Fulbourn John Frederick Herring Jnr was the eldest surviving son of John Frederick Herring Snr (1795-1865) and Ann Harris (1796-1838); his brothers Charles (1828-1856) and Benjamin (1830-1871) also became artists. He was born in Doncaster some time between 1816 and 1821 (probably nearer 1816), and was baptized on 22nd May 1821. (A previous John Frederick Herring Jnr, baptized on 21st June 1815, died as an infant). John Frederick Jnr lived with his parents in Doncaster until they moved to Six Mile Bottom near Newmarket in 1830. John Frederick Jnr spent the rest of his life in Cambridgeshire, dying at Fulbourn between Cambridge and Six Mile Bottom in 1907. Both in style and subject matter, John Frederick Jnr was greatly influenced by his father. This is seen particularly in his agricultural and farmyard scenes and steeplechasing subjects. He claimed that to be a good painter of horses, one had to be ‘brought up in the stable’. It has been suggested that Herring Snr and his son quarrelled over the similarity of their work, and Herring Jnr did not begin to exhibit his paintings at the Royal Academy until 1863, in order to avoid further conflict with his father. He was the only one of John Frederick Snr’s surviving children not to be mentioned in his will. Herring Jnr signed his work J. Fred. Herring, sometimes J.F. Herring, and less often J.F. Herring junior. Thirty-five of his works were reproduced in the Sporting Magazine. The work of John Frederick Herring Jnr is represented in the British Sporting Art Trust Gallery, Newmarket.