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BEFORE unveiling the painting, the Mayor of
Nantwich, Cllr Edith Williams, spoke about the work of art. She
said: “I think this is a great piece in the jigsaw of Nantwich. So many
people have said ‘What racecourse? We didn’t have one.’ I did speak to a
gentleman who did some metal detecting some time ago and I asked ‘Did
you find anything on the area?
“ ‘No, no horseshoes. Nothing. I did find
some clay pipes’, he said.
“So whether the people at the races clenched
their teeth and broke the pipes when they were watching the races, I
don’t know. Or maybe they threw them in the air when their horse won or
stamped on them when they lost.
“But it must have been a great social
occasion. It was here for 100 years in Nantwich. I presume there were a
lot of house parties. All the town would have been full. All the
businesses would do well. A bit like our own festivals, now. Nothing has
really changed in the last 200-odd years. They’re still coming in to
Nantwich to enjoy our hospitality.
“It’s a wonderful coup for the museum to get
this painting. It’s a marvellous museum and deserves all our support. I
am so pleased to be part of this evening. I am really looking forward to
seeing the picture properly. I have only ever seen copies.”
ROBERT Stones, thanked Cllr Williams, and
then spoke about the painting before outlining his view of what a day at
Nantwich Racecourse might have been like.
He said: “For those of you unaware of the
fact, the picture was actually offered for sale in 1979 and I have been
walking into this museum for the last I don’t know how many years and
looking at the facsimile of this picture hanging on the wall and
thinking: ‘Why, why, why didn’t we buy it?’ It’s such a phenomenal piece
of Nantwich history, and we didn’t get it.
“As an auctioneer, I can tell you that these
things just vanish off into the ether and if it goes into a collection
it might not come out into the light again for another 100 years. Or
more. So I was excited when Patrick Chesters discovered it was coming up
for sale. He told Anne (Wheeler, Curator) and Anne told me and all of a
sudden we’re just ‘This picture’s coming up for sale again.’ Absolutely
incredible.
“That’s just part of it because it’s all
very well saying ‘It’s coming up for sale again.’ You have got to go and
buy it; you’ve got to find the funding. This picture was estimated at
eight to twelve thousand pounds. A lot of money. It was so special –
really, really special. When we mentioned it to Keith Cafferty (a
Nantwich Town Councillor), he raced around and rattled on the doors of
Nantwich Town Councillors and said: ‘Come on. We have got to do
something about this. We have got to get this painting.’ You really did
do the business for us, Keith, and I thank you for that. It was really
great.
“And we have got to thank Anne – the star.
She was the one who rolled up her sleeves and found where to get the
funding from. Not easy, I can tell you. We approached V&A. I am
delighted to say that Janet Davies (V&A
/ MLA Purchase Grant Fund) is here. She shouldered a large proportion of the cost of
buying this picture. We also went to the Art Fund and they equally came
up with a large sum of money in order to make sure we could secure this
picture. I am delighted to see Bob Gowland and his colleague, Hanny
Woods, from the Art Fund, here.
“Anne and I went to Christies in London and
asked to see the painting. I think it was one of the better pictures in
the auction. It’s a great addition to the collection here. There were
frantic phone calls to the various parties at the V&A and the Art Fund
to tell them we had seen it, we liked it, we wanted it. They rushed
round, with a very limited period of time, and said we could have the
money to go ahead and buy it.
“We were able to bid up to £12,000.
“I got Stephen Sparrow, our picture
specialist at Peter Wilson, to bid for us. He’s ‘Mr Ice Man’. He got on
the phone and bought the picture for £6,000 on the hammer – which was
£2,000 less than the bottom estimate – plus the buyer’s fee.
“This picture is very special to me. It was
painted in 1781 by an artist who was a sporting artist of the era. Was
the jockey a local boy? Was he a relative of the owner? Indeed, who was
the owner? Did Mr Walsh live in Nantwich? This painting was painted on
the basis of seven minutes, or thereabouts, in 1781."
Robert did suggest that the artist might not
have seen Nantwich, given the background to the painting.
He went on: “The racecourse on Beam Heath was supposed
to be circular. It wouldn’t have had white railings round it but marker
posts or flags in the hedgerows. Apparently there was a wooden pavilion.
We don’t know where it was. Apparently this racecourse was somewhere on
the site of Alvaston Hall Hotel.
“Patrick Grange, who farmed that land, tells
me there is no trace of the
 racecourse having been there,” he said.
Robert advised people to go to look at the
painting closely and they would see that tied round the jockey’s knee
was a yellow ribbon (right). “Why is it there?” he asked. “It could have been
put there by a lover! Or it may have been the owner’s wife who put a
ribbon round his knee as a good luck gesture. Who knows?
"The artist would have been paid quite a lot
of money to do the painting, and we now have those seven minutes of
history in the Museum. We are massively grateful to all those who helped
us to achieve that,” said Robert.
THE Town Mayor then went to the gallery
where the painting was hanging – an area too small for the assembled
company together to watch the ceremony – to unveil it. But she was accompanied by a small
group of people, including the Mayor of Cheshire East (Cllr Margaret
Simon), representatives of the bodies who helped with funding the
purchase, and officials of Nantwich Museum.
The guests were, of course,
able to see the painting
afterwards.
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