Lord Robert Grosvenor's Hunters at Moor Park, Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire

The Grosvenor family were great patrons of the Turf who often hunted with the Quorn and were enthusiastic supporters of John Ferneley Sr. over many years. Among his earliest commissions from Lord Belgrave (later Earl Grosvenor and 1st Marquess of Westminster) were The Belvoir Hunt, 1827, and The Cheshire Hunt, 1828 (both in the collection of the Duke of Westminster), which show various members of the Grosvenor family. Grosvenor was a successful horse breeder, producing horses such as Pantaloon and Satirist (both horses are featured in lots 23 and 26, respectively). This Jacobean house at Moor Park, near Rickmansworth in Hertfordshire, was rebuilt by the Venetian architect Giacomo Leoni circa 1720 for Benjamin Styles, a director of the South Sea Company. After being owned by the naval hero Lord Anson and the banker Sir Laurence Dundas in the eighteenth century, in 1828 it was bought by Robert, 2nd Earl Grosvenor, later 1st Marquess of Westminster (1767‰ÛÒ1845).