John Trivett Nettleship was born at Kettering in Northamptonshire on 11 February 1841. He was the second son of Henry John Nettleship, a solicitor in the local firm of Lamb and Stringer. His mother was Isabella Ann, daughter of James Hogg, vicar of Geddington and master of Kettering Grammar School. John was for some time a chorister at New College, Oxford. Afterwards, he was sent to the cathedral school at Durham, where his brother Henry had preceded him. Having won the English verse prize on ‘Venice’ in 1856, he was taken away comparatively young, in order to enter his father’s office. There he remained, for two or three years, finishing his articles in London. Admitted a solicitor and in practice for a brief period, he decided to devote himself to art, and although largely self-taught, is also known to have received instruction at both Heatherley’s Art School and the Slade. According to Sir Alfred East, when Nettleship ‘seriously began art work it was soon apparent that his most marked talent was as a delineator of animals, especially savage wild animals, and he soon began, and continued for many years, to work at the Zoological Gardens [London Zoo], where he made the studies for the greater number of his paintings.’ He became widely known as a painter of animals and exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy, Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolours, the Grosvenor Gallery and the New Gallery. In 1880 Nettleship was invited out to India by the Gaekwar of Baroda, for whom he executed a cheetah hunt, as well as an equestrian portrait. In his later years, he took to the medium of pastel, and, painting his old subjects on a smaller scale, his work enjoying greater popularity. Nettleship was a man of wide intellectual horizons. In 1868, when only 27, he published a volume Essays on Robert Browning’s Poetry, which was probably the first serious study of the poet, and has passed through three editions with considerable enlargements, of which the later version was titled Robert Browning: Essays and Thoughts (1895). He was prominent as a founder of the Browning Society. He wrote a biography of the artist George Morland which was published in 1898. That same year, he also brought forth his book George Morland and the evolution from him of some later painters. Nettleship was one of The Brotherhood, an artistic grouping which included John Butler Yeats (1839-1922), Edwin John Ellis (1848-1916) and Sydney Prior Hall (1842-1922). Hall left the group very early on and was immediately replaced by the much younger George Wilson (1848-90). The other painter friends who intermingled with the group at the time, but who were never so closely involved, included Samuel Butler (1835-1902); Thomas William Gale Butler; Frank Potter (1845-87) and Robert Catterson Smith (1853-1938). They were admirers of William Blake and were on friendly terms with the Pre-Raphaelites or at least the Rossetti brothers and were part of the Bedford Park social and artistic set. In 1863 Gilchrist’s Life of Blake was published and in 1868, Swinburne’s Study. They were symptomatic of an interest in Blake which never died, but was given new life by the Rossetti circle. Nettleship responded by producing his ‘Blake Drawings, symbolic of Blake, on themes Blake would have recognised. Nettleship married in 1876, Ada, daughter of James Hinton; she survived him with three daughters, the eldest of whom was Ida (1877-1907) who would marry the artist Augustus John. (She entered the Slade in 1892 and won a three year scholarship in 1895. It was there that she met John, whom she married in 1901. She died of puerperal fever in 1907 after bearing him five sons). Along with John Macallan Swann and Briton Riviere, Nettleship was one of the foremost British wild animal painters of his day. The New York Times of 9 September 1893 noted his exhibition of work at Wunderlich & Co on Broadway. Nettleship also illustrated Aubyn Trevor-Battye’s Ice-bound on Kolguev: a chapter in the exploration of Arctic Europe to which is added a record of the natural history of the island (1895). He is also known to have taken pupils, amongst which was Fannie Moody. Nettleship died on 31 August 1902 at his residence in Wigmore Street, Marylebone, London, at the age of 61 and was buried at Kensal Green Cemetery. A memorial tablet in bronze, designed by Sir George Frampton, with the aid of two locally-born artists, Sir Alfred East and Thomas Cooper Gotch, was placed in the parish church at Kettering.