The April auction features a fine oil painting by Frederick Woodhouse (British/Australian, 1820-1909) in which a grey colt, with his jockey, is depicted alongside two men. The work presents us with just two truths: firstly, it is signed ‘Fred. Woodhouse’, but the circled date below the name of the artist is indistinct, and secondly, the jockey is dressed in the yellow and black racing silks of the trainer John Tait (1813-1888). Woodhouse is known for scattering ‘clues’ in his paintings to aid the narrative, and in this instance the man standing on the right appears to be displaying an object to the viewer, held in his left hand, it could be mounted on a rigid black surface, its shape approximates to a crucifix and it might be made of silver. In his right hand he seems to be holding a small book. Even on very close inspection it is virtually impossible to identify these objects.
In determining the date of the oil, the faint fourth digit is the challenge. The numbers 3, 6 and 8 are all somewhat similar in design, but prior to 1858 Woodhouse was not living in Australia. On 17 February 1858 Woodhouse, his wife Mary Bysouth and their four sons, had departed Southampton on the Parsee, built in 1851 in St John, New Brunswick, Canada, the ship weighed over one thousand tons. St John’s shipyards were kept extremely busy in the 1840s and 1850s, the peak years of the California and Australian gold rushes, in meeting the demand for sea travel to these locations. Woodhouse had trained at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, and later the Royal Academy, and he honed his animal painting skills through tuition under John Frederick Herring Senior (1795-1865). Herring painted racehorses and hunters throughout his productive career and his series of thirty-three St Leger and twenty-one Epsom Derby winners were particularly popular.
Woodhouse arrived in Melbourne on 14 May 1858, and it appears he wasted no time in developing his racehorse portraiture portfolio – the main reason for his emigration to Australia. Another oil by Woodhouse from the same year, Cardinal Wiseman with jockey William Rutland and owner Benjamin Warby Junior, is clearly signed and dated, ‘Fred W. Woodhouse 1858’ – the styling of this information is very similar to that seen in our work. Furthermore, the background in the Cardinal Wiseman oil and that of our painting could be the same scene and both show white starting posts. The middle grounds in both oils are presented in full sunlight, but in ours three horses and their jockeys, each in different racing silks, occupy the space, whereas the middle ground is empty in the Cardinal Wiseman painting.
It is likely that Benjamin Warby Junior (1825-1869), the son of Benjamin Warby (1805-1880) and Elizabeth Hunt (1808-1835), was a descendent of John Warby (1767-1851), a convict sent to Australia in the late 1700s who ironically became a famous constable in the Campbelltown area of New South Wales. Benjamin Warby is linked with the area around Wangaratta, in 1848 some 23,000 acres there were registered in his name, and in 1858 his son, Benjamin Junior, took over the land. Benjamin Warby Junior passed away aged forty-four and was buried at Taminick station, Victoria, the family’s pastoral property and homestead which looked out over the Warby Ranges, named in honour of his father.
The early decades of the 19th century in Victoria and New South Wales are littered with families, either descendants of convicts or first-generation immigrants, who were able to acquire vast tracts of land, and, having made a fortune through farming, and with ample estates and adequate funds to spare, they turned to the sport of horse racing. From the early 1800s Arab horses and thoroughbreds had been brought into Australia for breeding, racing, steeplechasing and hunting. There was a significant increase in the import of horses in the 1830s, by which time these pursuits were well established. Inevitably the owners of pedigree horses sought to commemorate their winners, and also promote their own standing amongst the racehorse fraternity, through the commissioning of professional portraits. Frederick Woodhouse was not the first artist to benefit from these developments, at the time of his arrival in in 1858, the artist Joseph Fowles (1809-1878), who had landed in Tasmania in 1838, was working from stables near Randwick racecourse where he combined his passions for both horse racing and equine art.
John Tait is a towering and influential figure in the history of Australian horseracing. Born in Melrose, near Edinburgh, Scotland, he was the son of a jeweller and engraver and had himself trained as a jeweller. In November 1837, along with his wife and daughter, he had arrived in Hobart, Tasmania, where he opened a business. By June 1843 Tait was the licensee of the Albion Inn, Hartley, and in 1847 he took over the Black Bull Inn, Bathurst, both towns located in the Blue Mountains, New South Wales. This area was crucial in the movement of sheep and cattle from inland districts to Sydney, and in his role as publican Tait would have been at the heart of local commerce and communities and clearly was soon in the position to channel surplus profits from his ventures to horse owning. He achieved his first win in 1847 with Whalebone in the St. Leger, Homebush, NSW, and at the same time went into partnership with the trainer, Noah Beale and the jockey, James Ashworth who was also valued by Tait for his skills in evaluating horses prior to their purchase.
Tait registered his racing colours, yellow and black, in 1857 so it would be reasonable to think that the jockey in our work is James Ashworth. The other two unidentified figures in the painting could perhaps be Tait and Beale. In the course of discussing the composition of the oil the artist or the owner of the grey colt might have suggested that the trainer be included too, given the fruitful and close working relationship enjoyed by the three men.
If the portrait of the grey colt does indeed date from 1858, this was an important year in the life of both Woodhouse and Tait. Woodhouse, having just arrived in Australia, was already working on commissions for high profile horse owners and just the year before Tait had returned from a pedigree horse racing trip to England and was cementing his role as a prolific racehorse winner. Tait secured his first Melbourne Cup win with The Barb in 1866, and was to win four Cups in total, his last with The Quack in 1872. Woodhouse was also closely linked to the Cup, starting with the first in 1861 he painted every winner until 1891, when photography replaced painting as a cheaper and quicker method for recording the victors of the Melbourne Cup.
The April Edit: 100 lots of Fine & Decorative Interiors
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