Signed, early, pencil study on paper.

Farrington as a young man bred cage birds and worked as a cow- and pig-man. Working up close with farm animals exposed him to both the beauty and the violence of the natural world and man’s place within it. A major theme of Farrington’s life work remained the agricultural cycles of weather and season: this study of a winter sty might have informed early paintings made of pigs in the Shropshire landscape.