Estimated Price:

   £   

Realised Price:

   £   

What is this symbol? This symbol indicates that this auction hose has verified this price result.

Log in or subscribe to view price data

THE PROPERTY OF A GENTLEMAN

TWO HUNTERS, EVENTFUL AND RANKSBRO, THE PROPERTY OF WILLIAM MASSEY STANLEY, WITH A DOG

measurements note
109 by 158 cm., 43 by 62 in.

Signed l.r.:J.Ferneley / Melton Mowbray. / 1833

Oil on canvas

PROVENANCE

Commissioned in 1833 by William Thomas Massey-Stanley (1807-1863)

LITERATURE

Major Guy Paget, The Melton Mowbray of John Ferneley, 1931, p. 141, no. 376 (listed in the Account Books 'WM Stanley Esq 1833 Portraits of Two Horses, Eventful and Ranksbro and Dog - 26.5.0')

NOTE

William Thomas Massey-Stanley was the eldest son of Sir Thomas Massy-Stanley, 9th Bt. (1782-1841) of Hooton Hall, Cheshire, and his wife Mary, daughter of Sir Carnaby Haggerston. The Stanleys were an old Cheshire family and acquired the estate of Hooton in the early fifteenth century. The family added the name Massey in the early eighteenth century, when William's great grandfather inherited the Puddington estate from his godfather William Massey.

William Massey Stanley was M.P. for Pontefract from 1837 to 1841 and Sheriff of Cheshire in 1845. He succeeded his father as tenth baronet in 1841. He was a keen hunting man, a member of the New Club at Melton and member of the Melton Hunt. In Ferneley's famous picture 'The Melton Breakfast' (illustrated in Paget, op.cit, facing p. 22) he is shown on the extreme left. Both William and his father were keen patrons of Ferneley. A picture by Ferneley, also dated 1833, showing William Massey Stanley driving his cabriolet in Hyde Park is in the Paul Mellon Collection. An extravagant figure, Massey Stanley was forced to sell his Hooton and Storeton estates to Christopher Naylor in about 1850. He died unmarried in Paris.