The industrial and agricultural revolutions transformed the face of Britain. Fiery blast furnaces, pit-head steam engines and fuming lime-kilns scarred a landscape cut across by canals and turnpikes. Within enclosed pasture and parkland farm, sporting animals of improbable proportions and striking dimensions grazed by serpentine lakes before Palladian piles. One of the artists who depicted these prize bulls, pedigree sheep and thoroughbred stallions in Arcadian surroundings of bucolic tranquillity was Thomas Weaver of Shrewsbury. Travelling from country house to house to paint pedigree animals for pedigree people his journeys map the networks of kinship, patronage and social aspirations that linked the landed families and gentry of Georgian England.
