Country House Fine Art has dated this Antique Equestrian Oil Painting to the 19th Century.
signed and titled lower left, Vine Colchester 1834
The size of the painting is approx 50 x 80 cms, whilst overall the size framed is
100cm x 71 cm
This is a fine painting in very good condition housed in a gilt frame ready to hang
Provenance: The E. W. Towler Collection, formerly of Glympton Park, Woodstock, Oxfordshire see details below
The artist John Vine was born with a disability that did not appear to interfere with his ability to draw and paint, largely self-taught as an animal painter, as his reputation grew he exhibited at the Society of British Artists in Grosvenor Square. Based at Colchester he painted many different subjects including farms, houses, children and animals.
Eric W. Towler was a remarkable man. He was born in 1900 and left school at the age of 12 to work in a Yorkshire pit and through a lifetime of hard work, self-improvement, luck and a refusal to limit his horizons achieved many of his aspirations.
As a Yorkshireman through and through, he believed in ‘spending the brass in his pocket’ and over time he was successful enough to acquire enough ‘brass’ to enable his purchase of Glympton Park and furnish it as a traditional country house with all the trappings – in his case collections of antique furniture, rugs, sporting oils and clocks.
His first step was to move from the pit to an apprentice as a bank clerk, where he claimed to have learned to ‘mek the tea’ but seems also to have acquired skills in book-keeping, which after a period as an Able Seaman in the RNVR during the end of the first world war, served him well in his future entrepreneurial journey. At the age of twenty-one, he vouchsafed all he had into a small coal dealing business, where his gift for sales led to an early invitation to be their Sales Director, and the rest is history.
Early in his life, Eric was able to achieve one of his aspirations. He described looking in awe through the gates of Tong Hall – a large Yorkshire property in a rural location near his home and during his thirties, funded by his growing success in a variety of industrial entrepreneurial roles, he was able to acquire it, and instead look out through the gates. This was first of a series of substantial properties, and his interest in farming.
His down to earth nature, knowledge and interest in newly emergent farming technologies led to a productive collaboration with Tom Williams, who was set the task of digging for Britain as Minister of Agriculture, and he continued his interest in farming through a number of estates in Yorkshire, Shropshire and Somerset before eventually settling at Glympton Park in Oxfordshire. Here he stewarded the development and modernisation of a large mixed estate covering everything from cereals, the latest forage crops to his pedigree Red Devon beef cattle, Suffolk sheep, dairy cows and pigs.
Eric was keen to enjoy every aspect of the land, and loved country sports and shooting, but particularly enjoyed fox hunting – a passion he continued for life. He managed to become Joint Master of the Badsworth Hunt in his early thirties, with the force and accessibility of his personality overcoming what some saw as a limitation of his humble background. When not on the hunting field his interest in horses extended from the practicalities of carriage driving to sporting oils, notably by Ferneley and Herring some of which are in this auction.
In Oxfordshire, in true renaissance style, he diversified from business to health service management as Chairman of the Nuffield, the Radcliffe, United Oxford Hospitals thus ‘ticking off’ another aspiration of his to be a doctor (as he initially saw it). This is a reflection of hi
Country House Fine Art has dated this Antique Equestrian Oil Painting to the 19th Century.
Specialists in fine art including portraits from the 17th century onwards, seascapes and landscapes
You can view the stock and full dealer information on the Country House Fine Art Profile Page
Horse & Carriage/gig , Country Scene, Antique Oil Painting, by John Vine of Colchester
