This page is a work in progress, and will be updated with additional information about Peregrine M. Feeney.

Relationship to John William Waterhouse:

• Friend and neighbour; had a studio at Primrose Hill Studios (1891 census records him at no. 7).
• A letter written by Waterhouse to 'Feeney' is reproduced on this website. Its recipient is probably Peregrine Feeney.
• Married Waterhouse's sister-in-law, Emily Kenworthy (1859-1917) in 1891 (between July-September) in the district of Uckfield, East Sussex: "Esther's sister Emily married the landscape painter Peregrine Feeney, who built a house at Croyde in Devon after leaving Primrose Hill Studios in 1892." (Anthony Hobson). The local studies librarian at Barnstaple reports that Feeney was living at a house called "Spring Haven" in Croyde between 1889 and 1890; his nephew Harry Feeney Hyde was in residence at "Spring Haven" in 1891. By 1901 Peregrine Feeney was listed in that year's census with a residence at Baggy Point, Baggy Point being the headland of Croyde Bay, and the Kelly Directory of 1901 lists him as still living at "Spring Haven". The house does not survive today. (Cathy Baker)
• Peregrine and Emily also lived at Clippesby Hall, Norfolk. There is a photo of Waterhouse taken in the conservatory at Clippesby Hall. A painting of the exterior of Clippesby Hall which has been attributed to Waterhouse is in a private collection.
• Peregrine Feeney's nickname was "Bear" due to his uncommon height; he had a "striking appearance". He was described as one who knew "what he wanted from life and apparently sacrificed golden prospects for a comfortable whim [and] becomes thereby an interesting, and rather enviable, character". This comment refers to his decision to step aside from the running of his father's newspaper business, a decision which subsequently made his brother John extremely wealthy (see further down this page for more details).
• Peter Trippi refers to him as "the wealthy landscapist and poet", and gives details of Peregrine's poetry, privately published in 1911: "In what is now the British Library's copy of this book, Waterhouse wrote, 'To WS Logsdail / In remembrance of Bear / Sunrise / Midsummer Day 1913'." "Feeney's 1911 volume of poetry contains panegyrics to various conservative heroes, including Carlyle, the explorer David Livingstone and journalist Henry Stanley... The volume also includes 'A Call to Arms: The Election, December 1910', which urges readers to rise for 'King and Constitution' against the Liberal government." (Peter Trippi)
• William Logsdail paints Waterhouse and Peregrine Feeney in two of his pictures: The Bank and Royal Exchange (Peregrine is the driver of the omnibus), and The Ninth of November (Guildhall Art Gallery).
• "When Peregrine Feeney died in 1913, Waterhouse designed his graveyard memorial at Thurne (Norfolk), incorporating a line from one of Peregrine's own poems... " (Anthony Hobson). "...and another sun driving off the night stars appears on the grave marker Waterhouse designed for his friend" and "Feeney died on 24 June 1913... The metal marker is at Thurne, Norfolk, and incorporates a line from Feeney's poem, 'Morning Light': 'To me thy dawn brings ever sweeter rest.' Designed by Waterhouse and produced by Morris Harding of Kilburn, it shows a large sun rising over an ocean upon which a galleon sails. A photograph of the marker appears in Hobson 1978, pl. 88." (Peter Trippi). See Waterhouse's painting of "Pandora" for the emblem of the sun rising over water appearing on Pandora's box, a symbol of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.
• Peregrine M. Feeney's father, John Frederick Feeney, was a newspaper proprietor. Peregrine's younger brother, John Feeney, took over their father's newspaper business, and became a wealthy businessman and philanthropist, owning an art collection that included several Burne-Jones cartoons. John Feeney donated a large number of works to Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery and also set up a charitable trust that survives to this day:
  • "...Then at the opening of the gallery a truly magnificent gift was made by Mr. John Feeney, who, having devoted many years of study and travel to the formation of a large oriental collection (selected with an expert's care and taste), presented his treasures to the town, filling with them no less than twenty-eight glass cases. This is in itself the essence of a museum of decorative art. To the Birmingham art metal worker the value of the Feeney collection, which is by its generous donor continually augmented, is priceless." (The Windsor Magazine, Vol II, July - December 1895)
  • "Mr. John Feeney has presented to the art gallery, Birmingham, six very valuable and interesting cartoons by Sir Edward Burne-Jones. These cartoons, each five feet in height, represent King Robert Bruce, David Earl of Huntingdon, Sir William Wallace, Provost Halliburton, George Wishart, and Queen Mary Stuart, and are the original designs for the stained glass windows in the Dundee free library. Mr Feeney's gift proves a welcome addition to the already valuable collection of cartoons and drawings by the great Birmingham artist. They are now in view in the art gallery." (The Museums Journal, Vol. I, July 1901 - June 1902)
  • "The growth of the Museum, with its fine collection of objects of fine and applied art, has kept pace with that of the Gallery, and the gifts of citizens have been no less profuse. Those of the late Mr. John Feeney alone numbered more than seventeen hundred; and to his munificent bequest of fifty thousand pounds Birmingham owes its great range of picture galleries, the opening of the last of which was the great event of 1919." ('The Art Collections of the Nation', The Studio, 1920)
• Peregrine's half-sister, Mrs. Richardson Evans, (who may have lived either at Wimbledon or at Toys Hill, Kent), donated the Merton Mill Pond and its banks to the National Trust circa 1907 as a memorial to her half-brother John, helping to create today's Wandle Park, near Merton Abbey Mills (the latter having a William Morris connection).
• Peregrine and John's nephew, Sir Charles Hyde, Bart, (1876-1942) a keen amateur archaeologist and racehorse owner, succeeded John as owner of the Birmingham Post. Charles' sister Connie, helped support Esther Waterhouse after her husband's death in 1917:
  • "The sale of Waterhouse's remaining work did not take place at Christie's until 1926: meanwhile, she parted with various possessions and some pictures, often to sympathetic friends. Among her visitors was Connie Hyde, niece of Peregrine Feeney and a sister of Sir Charles Hyde, who recalled the holidays at Baggy Point and paid generously for some prints of Nino's work and the oil study Gather Ye Rosebuds While Ye May." (Anthony Hobson)
• See also The Birmingham Post, 1857-1957: A Centenary Retrospect (1957), The Feeneys of the Birmingham Post (2004) and The John Feeney Charitable Trust.

Brief Biography:

"FEENEY, Peregrine Mulvogue, 1837-1913

Painted East Anglian and Thames side landscapes. Exhibited 11 times at Suffolk Street (Royal Society of British Artists) and three times at the Royal Academy. London address."

Source: Christopher Wood, "Victorian Painters", Antique Collectors' Club, 2008.

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"Peregrine M. Feeney, eldest son of the late Mr. John Frederick Feeney, the founder of the Birmingham Journal and Birmingham Daily Post, was educated at Edinburgh University. He adopted literature as a profession, and for many years was actively engaged upon the Press, joining at first the staff of the Scotsman, and afterwards acting as assistant editor of the Birmingham Daily Post. In 1868 he entered Carey's Academy as an art student, and subsequently the Royal Academy Schools. During the last thirty years he has exhibited at the Royal Academy, the Dudley Gallery, and the Institute, and has nearly always been represented at the exhibitions of the Birmingham Royal Society of Artists, of which body he is an Associate. His subjects have generally been seascapes.

168. "Llyn Idwal. The Cradle of the Mists", On canvas, 4 ft 5 1/2 in high by 6 ft wide. Painted in 1882. Presented by Sir John Jaffray, Bart. Llyn Idwal, in Nant Ffrancon ("Vale of Beavers"), North Wales, is a small lake deep-set between the rocky heights of Y Garn on the right and Glyder-fawr on the left. The lake is 1,200 feet above sea level. Idwal, so runs the legend, was the son of Owen Gwynedd, Prince of North Wales. He was thrown into the lake by his foster-father. No bird, it was long believed, would fly over the waters of the lake."

Source: City of Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, Illustrated Catalogue of the Permanent Collection of Paintings and Sculpture and the Pictures in Aston Hall and elsewhere, 1904.

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