7th Annual Sporting Art Auction has Outsized Equine Appeal

[Wandering Eyes]

In preparation for the seventh annual Sporting Art Auction at Keeneland’s sales pavilion on Nov. 17, staffers at Cross Gate Gallery in Lexington, KY have been keeping an eye on the bloodstock marketplace to gauge how their own sale might go.

The reason?

“When the horse auction market is good, the art market is also good,” explained Chelsea Dickson, the auction coordinator at Cross Gate, one of America’s foremost galleries of fine sporting art.

“What we’ve also found that as we’ve evolved in our partnership with Keeneland and grown our reputation, we’re getting higher and higher quality pieces each year,” Dickson continued. “That’s been really exciting for us, and exciting for our clients as well.”

Cross Gate has catalogued 189 artworks—many with horse racing themes and/or by noted equine artists—for the 2019 sale. View the online catalogue here. You can also register to bid online.

Dickson identified three pieces that might be of interest to TDN readers.

A Bedford Cottage Trial (lot 44) was painted by Godfrey Douglas Giles for Colonel Henry McCalmont, a prominent British racehorse owner in the late 19th Century. It shows a characteristic scene of training in Newmarket in the 1890s. McCalmont and his racing manager, Captain James Machell, are on their ponies in the corner of the painting, observing the training of their horses. Legend has it that James Jewitt, who trained for McCalmont, took his son to see the painting while Giles was working on it, and Jewitt’s son immediately recognized all of the horses and people in it.

“This was the big training scene at Newmarket,” Dickson explained. “It was done in 1893, which is the same year Isinglass, who is in that painting, won the English Triple Crown. It’s a glimpse into what training in the 1890s was like.”

The signed and dated oil-on-canvas is catalogued with an expected bidding range of $20,000-$30,000.

A Gypsy Encampment (lot 40) presents a favorite subject matter of Sir Alfred Munnings—even though equine art collectors today might know the artist more for his racing and fox hunting scenes.

“This is one of my favorite paintings in the auction,” Dickson said. “It comes out of the estate of George Blackwell, the big British bloodstock agent, and we’re selling a lot of his paintings this year.

“Munnings made most of his money painting commissions of high-society people on their horses, or just their horses,” Dickson continued. “But he really felt most at home when he was in a gypsy encampment, hanging out with people who loved bright colors, crazy outfits, chickens running around, the itinerant lifestyle. So this type of painting, he didn’t paint for money. This is sort of Munnings at his best because he’s doing what he loves to do, not because someone’s paying him to paint. And his gypsy paintings don’t come up [for sale] as often, so they’re pretty collected.”

The signed and dated 1906 watercolor has an expected bidding range of $60,000-$90,000.

Tiger (lot 100a), painted by the late David Shepherd (he died in 2017), will be sold to benefit the David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation, an organization that advocates for wildlife conservation on an international scale. This painting of a tiger on the prowl was part of the Shepherd’s effort to help save wild tigers from the brink of extinction. A catalogue explanation states that the world has now lost 97% of its wild tiger population.

“That’s a late addition to the catalogue,” Dickson explained. “David Shepherd was the preeminent wildlife artist of the 20th Century, and started the Wildlife Foundation as a way to give back to the animals that gave him so much commercial success. And one cool thing is we also have a painting by his granddaughter, who is also an artist, in the auction this year.”

The signed and dated 1988 oil-on-canvas has an expected bidding range of $40,000-$60,000.

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