The Jockey Club Collection

Book excerpt: The Jockey Club's first premises in St James's Street reflected its members' habit of living among racing pictures, but their collective tastes could only be fully indulged after it built a large Coffee Room in Newmarket in 1752 and then multiplied the accommodation in 1771 on the site still occupied today. Over the centuries members have given the Club scores of pictures marking the triumphs of their horses. More have come as bequests of prized possessions and recently a few have been added by purchase. Some of the paintings by Stubbs, Herring, Munnings and others are amongst the best racing art in existence. Many are by lesser artists but taken together as a whole the contents of the Jockey Clubs Rooms are enough to fascinate anyone with even a passing interest in sporting pictures or racing. This catalogue much extends the previous one published in 2006 which was arranged in the order of the Rooms in which paintings were hung; in this new publication works are arranged under the names of their creators with short biographies of the more important artists. There are some 50 additions of which perhaps the most important are life-sized bronze friends for Hyperion, a particularly fine Ferneley, and a portrait of The Queen with her Gold Cup winner, Estimate. The Collection consists of several hundred paintings, prints, bronzes and trophies plus some slightly macabre bits of champions made into all sorts of artefacts, usually mounted feet. Taken together they give an accurate impression of the importance of the Jockey Club's contribution to the development of the thoroughbred, for long the fastest and still the most beautiful way of getting from here to there.