Herring was born before 1825, the eldest of the three sons of John Frederick Herring, a sporting and animal painter best known for his portraits of racehorses. Nothing is known of the younger John's education or training, but from an early age he imitated his father's work, his father adding the suffix "Senr" to his signature from at least 1846, in order to avoid confusion. Herring first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1863, showing there until 1873; but like his father he exhibited chiefly at the Society of British Artists on Suffolk Street, from 1860 to 1875. He died in 1907.
[Hayes, John. British Paintings of the Sixteenth through Nineteenth Centuries. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1992: 114.]
Artist Bibliography
1922
Sparrow, Walter Shaw. British Sporting Artists from Barlow to Herring. London and New York, 1922: 222-223.
1992
Hayes, John. British Paintings of the Sixteenth through Nineteenth Centuries. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1992: 114.