Doncaster Races, 1830: Horses Starting for the St. Leger (Primary Title)

The Saint Leger, founded in 1776 by Colonel Barry Saint Leger, is one of the five oldest and most important annual horse races in England. Run in September at Doncaster, Yorkshire, it is the final race of a Triple Crown competition for three-year-old colts and fillies. The Saint Leger is the longest of the classic courses and a grueling challenge for thoroughbreds that compete in the Two Thousand Guineas and the Derby earlier in the season.

Pollard had been attending the Doncaster Races for several years before he completed this pair of paintings, and they are a testimony to the immense popularity of the event during the early 19th century. In 1823, his father, the engraver and animal painter Robert Pollard, wrote that his sons had been to Doncaster to make sketches of the viewing stand and winning horses. The artist relied on these careful drawings to prepare his paintings, evident here from his detailed rendering of the neoclassical features and palatial aspect of the hippodrome, as well as the exaggerated oblique angle he used to capture the distinctively long intermediary turn of the course. The seemingly innumerable spectators are rendered in miniature, effectively conveying the grandeur of the venue. The green tones of the vast turf and the expansive clouded sky above the field in both compositions imbue each with the bright and immaculate qualities typical of Pollard’s style.

The canvas on the right depicts the moment of the Saint Leger’s debut in 1831. The attention given to the colors of the jockeys silks in the painting on the left indicates that it is an accurate record of the finish of the race.