sporting paintings by Frederick Woodhouse Snr

Sporting Paintings by Frederick Woodhouse Snr and Jnr

from The Laverty Collection

Lots 95 – 98

Born in Essex, England in 1820, Frederick (Fred) v arrived in Melbourne in 1858 with his wife and four sons, including Frederick Junior, then aged ten. Another two sons were born subsequently; four of the six sons were to become artists. Woodhouse was an experienced artist, as well as a former yeoman cavalryman, and swiftly established himself as the colony’s pre-eminent sporting and animal artist. Over the next forty years, he was a prolific producer of oil paintings, watercolours, lithographs and illustrations for newspapers, magazines, catalogues and studbooks, he co-founded Bell’s Life in Victoria and Sporting Chronicle; published and illustrated a history of the Melbourne Cup; and designed sporting trophies. While thoroughbred portraits were his staple, he also painted hunting and coursing scenes, cattle, sheep, greyhounds and the occasional fishing, landscape or historical scenes. From 1860, Woodhouse exhibited in various local and intercolonial exhibitions and was a founding member of the Victorian Academy of Arts. His patrons included wealthy landowners such as the Chirnsides of Werribee Park and Austins of Barwon Park, who now-infamously introduced rabbits, hares, deer, foxes and numerous game birds into Victoria for their hunting pleasure.

Then, as now, racing was a popular sport. The Melbourne Race Club was formed in 1838, with Flemington becoming the site of Melbourne’s principal races from 1840. The Melbourne Cup was first held in 1861 and soon became a favoured annual spectacle. In 1888 when Mentor won, an estimated 143,000 people attended – many thousands more than attend now. The genre of the sporting picture had flourished in Britain in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries simultaneously with the breeding of thoroughbred horses, and the desire to records one’s prize-winning racers, stock and sporting achievements came with the British to Australia. Woodhouse timed his emigration well – one of his best-known achievements is painting the winner of the Melbourne Cup each year for over thirty years. In the group of paintings offered here, we see three of Woodhouse’s oil paintings covering a range of equine topics: the racehorse Le Var (winner of many intercolonial prizes including the Perth Cup, 1898); the trotter Wanderer (winner of numerous Trots 1872 – 77); and an unidentified horse returned to its stall with the feathered and furred spoils of a hunt. Each follow the well-established profile pose emphasising their superb condition and breeding. The portrait of Mentor with his trainer and handler was painted by Frederick Junior, who had been apprentice and assistant to his father and whose technique is frequently similar in painterly precision and refinement of proportions. However, the increasing use of photography in the later nineteenth century reduced the demand for the fine horse portrait, and Woodhouse lamented the change: ‘A Melbourne Cup always meant £100 to me and the work occupied about a fortnight, but photography knocked me out. Now an owner can get a picture of his horse in a sixpenny weekly, or for nothing – wrapped around the meat.’1

The sporting genre in Australian art has received comparatively little attention, with the exception of kangaroo hunting scenes. These paintings are from the renowned collection of Dr Colin Laverty who became the expert on the art of the Woodhouse family, and author of Australian Colonial Sporting Painters: Frederick Woodhouse and Sons.

1. William Moore, cited in Laverty, C., Australian Colonial Sporting Painters: Frederick Woodhouse and Sons, The David Ell Press, Sydney, 1980, p. 12

ALISA BUNBURY

FREDERICK WOODHOUSE SNR

(1820 – 1909) WANDERER, – PROPERTY OF P. G. DIXON ESQ., 1878 oil on canvas 61.0 x 91.5 cm

ESTIMATE: $12,000 – 18,000

95

PROVENANCE

Mr & Mrs R. Van Vuure, The Hague, Netherlands The Laverty Collection, Sydney, acquired from the above in February 1987

EXHIBITED

Racing Days, Geelong Art Gallery, Victoria, 1 May – 15 June 1997, cat. 8

RELATED WORK

Wanderer- Property of P. G. Dixon Esq., 1878, tinted lithograph with hand colouring, 54.5 x 85.0 cm, illus. in Australia and Australian-Related Art, 1830s – 1970s, Deutscher Fine Art, Melbourne, 1987, cat. 6

(1847 – 1927) MENTOR, WINNER OF 1888 MELBOURNE CUP, WITH TRAINER WALTER S. HICKENBOTHAM

AND JOCKEY MICK O’BRIEN, AT FLEMINGTON, 1889 oil on canvas 71.0 x 94.0 cm signed and dated lower right: Fred Woodhouse Junr / 1889

ESTIMATE: $20,000 – 30,000

PROVENANCE

Brian Maguire, Melbourne, by 1969 Larry Foley, Fremantle Kozminsky Galleries, Melbourne The Laverty Collection, Sydney, acquired from the above in October 1998

EXHIBITED

Pastures & Pastimes: An Exhibition Of Australian Racing, Sporting & Animal Pictures Of The 19th century, Victorian Artists Society Gallery, Melbourne, 14 October – 5 November 1983; Geelong Art Gallery, Victoria, 19 November – 20 December 1983; S.H. Ervin National Trust Gallery, Sydney, 6 January – 19 February 1984, cat. 78 Mentor and the 1888 Melbourne Cup, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 28 October – 20 November 2002 Gambling in Australia: thrills, spills and social ills, Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, 6 April – 10 October 2004 (illus. in exhibition catalogue)

LITERATURE

Bernstein, D. L., First Tuesday in November: The Story of the Melbourne Cup, William Heinemann Ltd., Melbourne, 1969, p. 225 (illus., as ‘Mr D. S. Wallace’s MENTOR, winner of the Melbourne Cup in 1888, with trainer Walter Hickenbotham and jockey Mick O’Brien’) Laverty, C., Australian Colonial Sporting Painters, Frederick Woodhouse and Sons, The David Ell Press, Sydney, 1980, pp. 82 – 83 (illus.) Laverty, C., Pastures & Pastimes: An Exhibition Of Australian Racing, Sporting & Animal Pictures Of The 19th century, Victorian Ministry of the Arts, Melbourne, 1983, cat. 78, p. 65 Makin, J., ‘Art has its day at the races – in the frame’, Herald Sun, Melbourne, 3 November 1998

FREDERICK WOODHOUSE SNR

(1820 – 1909) AFTER THE HUNT, 1882 oil on academy board 47.0 x 61.0 cm signed and dated lower right: Fred Woodhouse Snr / 1882 inscribed verso: … / ‘69 Australia

ESTIMATE: $8,000 – 12,000

97

PROVENANCE

Gould Galleries, Melbourne The Laverty Collection, Sydney, acquired from the above in November 1981

EXHIBITED

Spring Exhibition 1977: Recent Acquisitions, Joseph Brown Gallery, Melbourne, 19 October – 3 November 1977, cat. 18 Pastures & Pastimes: An Exhibition Of Australian Racing, Sporting & Animal Pictures Of The 19th century, Victorian Artists Society Gallery, Melbourne, 14 October – 5 November 1983; Geelong Art Gallery, Victoria, 19 November – 20 December 1983; S.H. Ervin National Trust Gallery, Sydney, 6 January – 19 February 1984, cat. 63

LITERATURE

Laverty, C., Pastures & Pastimes: An Exhibition Of Australian Racing, Sporting & Animal Pictures Of The 19th century, Victorian Ministry of the Arts, Melbourne, 1983, cat. 63, p. 60

FREDERICK WOODHOUSE SNR

(1820 – 1909) CHAMPION RACEHORSE LE VAR, WITH OWNER ALFRED ECCLES, 1897 oil on canvas 56.0 x 76.5 cm signed and dated lower right: Fred Woodhouse Senr / 1897 bears inscription on frame verso: By F Woodhouse 1897 MB. A. Eccles (OWNER) / “LE VAR”

ESTIMATE: $12,000 – 18,000

PROVENANCE

The Laverty Collection, Sydney

98

EXHIBITED

Pastures & Pastimes: An Exhibition Of Australian Racing, Sporting & Animal Pictures Of The 19th century, Victorian Artists Society Gallery, Melbourne, 14 October – 5 November 1983; Geelong Art Gallery, Victoria, 19 November – 20 December 1983; S.H. Ervin National Trust Gallery, Sydney, 6 January – 19 February 1984, cat. 71 Laverty 2, Newcastle Region Art Gallery, New South Wales, 14 May – 14 August 2011

LITERATURE

Laverty, C., Australian Colonial Sporting Painters, Frederick Woodhouse and Sons, The David Ell Press, Sydney, 1980, pp. 58 – 59 (illus., as ‘Le Var in a Stable, with Owner Alfred Eccles’) Laverty, C., Pastures & Pastimes: An Exhibition Of Australian Racing, Sporting & Animal Pictures Of The 19th century, Victorian Ministry of the Arts, Melbourne, 1983, cat. 71, p. 62 (as ‘Le Var, Winner of Major West Australian Races’)