Original works of art

Francis Barlow, who painted birds, fish and animals, came to London from Lincolnshire and was apprenticed to William Shepherd, the court animal painter. His style was based on close observation, and had little in common, other than subject matter, with his exotic contemporaries such as Bogdani and Hondius.

Barlow's earliest known work, dated 1648, is a drawing of "David Slaying the Lion," now in the British Museum; the following year his engraving of "Princess Elizabeth" was published in The Hague.

The quality of Barlow's paintings, which vividly show the rural life of his age, place him far above his contemporaries. The writer Walter Shaw Sparrow called him the "Father of Sport in Art."