Acknowledgements

and

Publications

Most of the paintings reproduced here are in public collections, and I am particularly grateful to the BBC for creating such a useful website that displays so many of Thomas Weaver's pictures (and some attributed to him that I suspect are not his work). These public collections include the Government Art Collection, and Tate Britain in London, the Beamish Museum in County Durham, the Shrewsbury Museum, the Museum of Rural Life in Reading and several properties owned by the National Trust, including Calke Abbey, Rufford Old Hall, Upton House, Attingham Park and Shugborough Hall. 

Some paintings are in private hands and I thank those people who have kindly permitted me to reproduce images of them. These include the Weston Park Foundation and Holkham Enterprises.

Bridgeman Art Library, Artnet and AllPosters have proved useful sources of some images, and I wish to acknowledge those museums and art galleries with web-links to images or further information about the provenance of whereabouts of Thomas Weaver's art works.

All the prints of Thomas Weaver's paintings (the majority engraved by William Ward) are in the public domain, and can be found in the British Museum, the Library of the Rothamsted Research Station, Harpenden, and the Archives of the Royal Agricultural University, Cirencester. I am grateful to their archivists for their help in tracking them all down. They can also be found reproduced in Boalch (1958).


BBC - Paintings in Public Collections
Tate Britain - Mr Marris's Sheep-Show
British Museum Prints
Yale Centre for British Art
Bridgeman Art Library

 Short Bibliography

  1. Boalch DH. Prints and Paintings of British Farm Livestock 1780-1910. Harpenden: Rothamsted Experimental Station Library 1958
  2. Coates C. The General Short-Horned Herd-Book. Otley: W Walker 1822 (vol 1)
  3. Deuchar S. Sporting Art in Eighteenth Century England: a Social and Political History. New Haven, Conn: Yale University Press 1988
  4. Egerton J. British Sporting and Animal Paintings 1655-1867. London: Tate Gallery and Yale Centre for British Art 1978
  5. Frankau J. Eighteenth Century Artists and Engravers: William Ward ARA and James Ward RA, their Lives and Works. London: Macmillan 1904.
  6. Gilbey W. Animal Painters of England from the Year 1650. London: Vinton & Co. 1900
  7. Hampton JF. Portrait of a Painter. Shropshire Magazine 1968; X: 32-33
  8. Moncrieff E. Farm Animal Portraits. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Antique Collector’s Club 1996
  9. Spargo D. This Land is our Land: Aspects of Agriculture in English Art. London: Mall Galleries 1989
  10. Sparrow WS. British Sporting Artists. London: Spring Books 1922
  11. Sparrow WS. Book of Sporting Pictures, London, 1931
  12. Sparrow WS. British Farm Animals in Prints and Paintings. London: Walker’s Galleries 1932
  13. Sparrow WS. John Boultbee: Sporting Painter. Connoisseur 1933; XCI: 148-59
  14. Sparrow WS. Thomas Weaver of Shropshire. A Yeoman in Paint. Connoisseur 1934; XX: 386-91
  15. Taylor B. Animal Painting in England from Barlow to Landseer. London: Penguin 1955
  16. Trow-Smith R. A History of British Livestock Husbandry 1700-1900. London: Routlege and Kegan Paul
  17. Weaver F. Thomas Weaver. Extracts from the Diary of a Shropshire Artist. Shrewsbury Chronicle 1907; June 7th and 14th
These three books have pictures by Thomas Weaver on their covers