John Greville Fennell

Who was John Greville Fennell?

John Greville Fennell, was an artist, naturalist, and angler.

Fennell was born at sea between Ireland and England in 1807. He began his career as an artist by winning the silver medal offered by the Duke of Sussex for a drawing of Hercules, and afterwards was a student at Finden's house, where he was intimate with Hablot K. Browne, who was similarly employed. As a young man Fennell succeeded best in comic painting, but later in life was fonder of landscapes. In some of these, however, he was very careless, and was always unequal in his work. He drew pictures of the tournament at Eglinton Castle for the ‘Illustrated London News.’ His fondness for natural history displayed itself chiefly in observations on the habits of fish and waterside birds.

These he carried on simultaneously with the practice of angling, of which he was a devoted follower, especially in the River Thames. He was a member of the ‘Field’ staff from the commencement of that paper in 1853, and wrote week after week in it on fishing subjects; besides which he was a frequent contributor to the ‘Fishing Gazette’ and other sporting papers on angling and outdoor pursuits. He was author of ‘The Book of the Roach,’ 1870, an exhaustive treatise on angling for that fish; and contributed a paper called ‘Curiosities of Angling Literature’ to Mr. Cholmondeley Pennell's ‘Fishing Gossip,’ 1866. This is a discursive attempt at the humorous style in writing on angling topics, which was at that time fashionable. He also wrote ‘The Rail and the Rod,’ a meritorious guide book to the favourite angling resorts of the Thames.