This spectacular early work belongs to an important series of racing pictures that John Frederick Herring Sr. carried out on the occasion of the 1828 Doncaster Gold Cup, a famously hard-fought race over a distance of two miles and five furlongs. Founded in 1766, the Doncaster Cup is the oldest continuous horse race in Britain and was the grandest object offered as a racing prize when Herring depicted this scene, a subject revisited by the artist on numerous occasions. All six runners are pictured in the home straight, about two furlongs out, led by the eventual winner, Laurel, ridden by T. Nicholson, with Rose Hill, the course’s distinctive undulation in its back stretch, visible in the far distance.
From right-to-left, the six runners can be identified as: Major Yarburgh’s four-year-old brown colt, Laurel; Mr. Nowell’s seven-year-old bay horse, Longwaist; Lord Milton’s four-year-old brown colt, Medoro; Mr. Golden’s four-year-old brown colt, Robin Hood; Lord Kelburne’s six-year-old chestnut mare, Purity; and Mr. Gully’s four-year-old bay colt, Mameluke.
In an exciting turn of events, Laurel, the 4 to 1 second favorite, beat the favorite, Mameluke, whose starting odds were 5 to 6. Mameluke in Lord Jersey’s colors had won the previous year’s Derby and sold to Mr. Gully, a prize fighter, before his defeat in the Doncaster St. Leger by Matilda, where he placed second with Laurel third.
The Sporting Magazine’s Alfred Highflyer reported the 1828 Doncaster Gold Cup race:
“For this year’s Cup a field of six came out; viz. Robin Hood, Purity, Medoro, Mameluke, Laurel and Longwaist. At starting, Longwaist set off, and made very strong play to within the distance, where Nicholson brought up Laurel, defeated him, and won rather clever. It was a very severe run race, and the others were dead beat. Mameluke was backed at even to win, but he could not go the pace” (Vol. XXII N.S., no. CXXXIII, October 1828, p. 398).
Laurel was a horse of fine pedigree, bred by Major Yarburgh of Heslington Hall, near York, in 1824, by Blacklock out of Wagtail by Prime Minister, and half-brother to Major Yarburgh’s outstanding St. Leger winner Charles XII. His racing career lasted between 1827 and 1831 and he beat many of the era’s most notable racehorses, including Fleur-de-Lys, Bessy Bedlam, Mulatto, Matilda, Halston and Maria. In 1828, prior to the present victory, he won the Constitution Stakes at York and Cups at Beverley and Pontefract. The following year, Laurel won three more races, including the Gold Cup at Preston and the Strand Cup at Liverpool. He placed second in the 1829 Doncaster Gold Cup behind Lord Cleveland’s Voltaire, earned two more Gold Cups in 1830 through victories at York and Pontefract, and was successful in another two races. Laurel’s final triumph was in 1831, when he won the Gold Cup at Beverley.
Laurel was sold at the end of his racing career to Mr. Theobald as a stallion and became the grandsire of two classic winning fillies, Rhedycina, who won the Oaks in 1850 and Governess, who won the Oaks and 1,000 Guineas in 1858.
Herring started out as a coachman on routes between London and Yorkshire, painting only in his spare time. In 1814, at the age of 19, he moved to the Yorkshire racing center of Doncaster—one of the stops on his drives—and became an artist-full time, at first working for a local coach-painter but quickly establishing himself on his own with commissions for horse portraits from the town gentry. In 1816 he painted the winners of the St. Leger, beginning with Duchess, and in a joint venture with the Doncaster Gazette annually sketched each St. Leger winner for a series of published and publicly available color prints.
Herring painted a number of works depicting major races at Doncaster, including The Dead Heat for the Doncaster Great St. Leger, 1839 (Fig. 1, sold Sotheby’s, New York, 31 January 2020, lot 449) and Preparing to Start for the Doncaster Gold Cup (Fig. 2, sold Sotheby’s New York, 4 November 2011, lot 101).
