The last horse race run before Charles the Second of Blessed Memory by Dorsett Ferry near Windsor Castle [graphic].
1687
Items
Details
Title
The last horse race run before Charles the Second of Blessed Memory by Dorsett Ferry near Windsor Castle [graphic].
Created/published
London : By P. Tempest over against Somerset House Water Gate in the Strand, and S.Baker at the White Horse in Fleet Street, 1687.
Description
1 print : etching ; 370 x 510 mm
Material base
paper
Note
This is a PRELIMINARY RECORD. It may contain incorrect information. Please email catalog@folger.edu for assistance.
Title from item.
Title from item.
Genre/form
Prints.
Place of creation/publication
Great Britain -- England -- London.
Item Details
Call number
ART 270255 (size L)
Folger-specific note
From dealer's description: "Etching, 370 x 510 mm, with English inscriptions above and below, lettered with title in cartouche above, and at the bottom in an oval ‘Drawen from the place and design’d by Francis Barlow, 1687’, with four columns of verse, and the address of the publisher below; cropped close in places, otherwise apart from some light dust- soiling, in very good original state. The first known English print of a horse race: ‘An etching of Charles II and his court viewing a horse race at Datchet Ferry from the royal box, protected by Yeomen of the Guard. In front of the box is a set of weighing scales to measure the weight of the jockeys’. ‘The text on this print explains that the race itself was held on 24 August 1684, but that Barlow had only designed the print, drawing the scene on the spot, three years later in 1687. The claim to topographical accuracy is only partly justified: Windsor Castle in the background is more or less correct, but the view of the Thames and Datchett (not Dorsett as Barlow has it) Ferry seems to have been reversed in the etching. Charles was a great enthusiast for racing, and was the first monarch to run horses in his own name at meetings at Newmarket and Burford Downs. ‘As Stephen Deucher (‘Sporting art in eighteenth-century Britain’, New Haven 1988, pp.37-8) points out, the print raises the question why it was etched three years after the event, when Charles himself had been dead for two years. He reasonably suggests that there was a political undercurrent, in which the verses praise the good old days and, by implication, contrast them with the unsavoury present under the Catholic James II. This hypothesis is supported by the fact that Barlow was the chief producer of Whig propaganda during the Popish Plot. But the full explanation remains to be discovered. ‘This print has long been called the first racing print, and as long as only single-sheet prints are considered, and book-illustrations and series are ignored, this seems to be true. In the history of British printmaking this sheet stands out as something quite new and different, though there is a long gap before it was followed by Peter Tillemans (c.1684-1734), who advertised four prints of the Newmarket races and the fox chase in the Daily Post on 24 May 1725’ (Antony Griffiths, The Print in Stuart Britain, BM 1998, cat.170).” Ordered from Pickering & Chatto, D 9217, 2018-07-02, Cat. 798, item 6. Purchase made possible by The K. Frank and Joycelyn C. Austen Acquisitions Endowment. Purchase made possible by The B. F. Saul Rare Book Acquisitions Fund.
Folger accession
270255