Salopian Held by a Groom, and Beating Jolly Bacchus and Gay in the Distance
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Oil painting depicting the racehorse Salopian held by a groom, and beating Jolly Bacchus and Gay in the distance. Salopian is a bay horse with a cropped tail and wearing a bridle. He is shown in profile facing the left. The groom stands to the left holding the reins. He wears a black riding hat, red coat, buff knee-length breeches, white socks and buckled shoes. They stand in a grassy landscape with woods in the right distance. In the right mid-ground, three horses and riders gallop to the left.
Salopian was a racehorse owned by Mr Robert Piggott of Huntingdonshire, who beat the Duke of Richmond's horse Gay, and Mr Connolly's Jolly Bacchus (shown in the background of the painting) at the Newmarket Craven Meeting of 1776, winning a sweepstake of 500 guineas. He had many successes between 1774 and 1777.
John Nost Sartorius belonged to a family of minor British painters who specialised in sporting art. His father, John, came from Nuremberg and settled in London around the 1720s. He began to produce paintings of horses and hunting scenes for aristocratic patrons in the 1760s. John Nost was the most successful member of the family. He was popular with several very wealthy patrons including George, the Prince of Wales, whom he often met at the races in Newmarket. John Nost exhibited at the Society of Artists and the Royal Academy in London.
This painting celebrates that race horse Salopian and not Satopicen as it states on the frame. The painting is listed in the 1922 inventory as being in the Bachelors Wing, bedroom no. 1 and probably was acquired for the room by Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild. The Bachelors Wing was built to accommodate male guests and was decorated throughout with similar sporting pictures, a typical feature of English country houses that Ferdinand sought to emulate.
Phillippa Plock, 2012
Dimensions (mm) / weight (mg)
617 x 739 (sight size)
Signature & date
signed and dated, lower right: Sartorius Pinx 1794
Provenance
- Acquired by Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild (b.1839, d.1898); inherited by his sister Alice de Rothschild (b.1847, d.1922); inherited by her great-nephew James de Rothschild (b.1878, d.1957); inherited by his wife Dorothy de Rothschild (b.1895, d.1988); then to a Rothschild Family Trust.
Collection
- Waddesdon (Rothschild Family)
- On loan since 1997