(Horse Racing)

John Frederick Herring.  Portraits of the Winning Horses of the Great St. Leger Stakes, at Doncaster, from the Year 1815 to the Year 1824, Inclusive.  Doncaster and London: Sheardown and Son and W. Sams, [1825]



Large folio (24  1/2  x 17 in.; 622 x 432 mm).  Letterpress title-page, list of subscribers, list of winners of the St. Leger from 1776 to 1814. 10 very fine hand-colored aquatint horse portraits of the winners from 1815 to 1824 after Herring by T. Sutherland, each with letterpress description of riders and winners of the Produce and the St. Leger stakes for each year; title somewhat foxed, minimal light marginal foxing to remaining text leaves,  plates with minimal wear and finger soiling to extremities of margins.  Publisher's 1/4 red morocco, boards, printed label on front cover, publishers' announcement of continuation of the series (dated 19 September 1825) on front pastedown, errata slip on rear pastedown; rubbed, some soiling, extremities worn.  Red buckram portfolio, black morocco gilt label on front cover; worn, some dampstaining.

Lane pp. 119-21; Siltzer pp. 139-45; cf Tooley p. 218 (1829 edition).

First edition, first issue of one of the finest collections of race horse portraits ever issued, this copy with the maginficent plates in remarkably bright and fresh condition. One of only 60 copies, all distributed to the 53 subscribers. Scarce and very rare at auction.  The only other copies to appear in the auction rooms in the last forty years are the Widener copy (Doyle's, 3 May 2000, lot 224) and the Duke of Gloucester copy (Christie's London, 27 January 2006, lot 673). 

Accompanying the book are 9 unbound hand-colored aquatints of winners of the St. Leger for the years 1826, 1828-29, 1832, 1835, 1837-38, 1840-41, all by Herring except the 1826 and 1841 plates.  The plates are of approximately the same dimensions as the plates in the bound volume; and the images are as fresh as those in the book, though condition of the margins varies from plate to plate.  Also included are several letterpress broadsheets similar to the text leaves bound in the volume.

John Frederick Herring (1795–1865) ranks alongside Sir Edwin Landseer as one of the finest painters of animals of the mid-nineteenth century.  Although London born, he came into his own as a painter after moving in 1814 to Doncaster, where he was employed as a painter of inn signs and coach insignia.  He later became a night coach driver and painted horse portraits for inn parlors in his spare time.  He became known as the "artist coachman," and the gentry began to hire him to paint hunters and racehorses.  He also painted designs for Spode china and was employed to paint animals by the Duc d'Orleans and the Duchess of Kent .  In about 1845, he received a commission from Queen Victoria, who remained a patron for the rest of Herring's life.