Lot 5: William Tasker (British, 1808-1852)

Colonel Peel's The Dey of Algiers, with Nat Flatman up, winning the 1840 Chester Cup
indistinctly signed 'TASKER' (lower left) and indistinctly inscribed with various names of racehorses (lower left)
oil on canvas
25 1/4 x 36 in. (64.2 x 91.4 cm.)

Chester, Grosvenor Museum, The Chester Artists Louis Rayner and William Tasker, December 1983 - May 1984, no. 43.

S. Mitchell, The Dictionary of British Equestrian Artists, Woodbridge, 1985, p. 418.

By family descent from the artist until 1980.
Anonymous sale; Bonham's, London, 6 March 1980, lot 1.
Anonymous sale; Christie's, New York, 6 June 1986, lot 288, where purchased by the present owner.

THE PROPERTY OF A PRIVATE COLLECTOR, NEW MEXICO

The winner is the horse on the rails in Colonel Peel's colors of Purple with an Orange cap. Mr. Robinson's Melbourne was giving him 22 lbs and was a much more notable horse, eventually champion stallion and getting four horses in the great West Australian, Blink Bonny (winner of the Derby and the Oaks), Sir Tatton Sykes (winner of the 2,000 Guineas and St. Leger) and Canezon (winner of 1,000 Guineas and twice winner of the Goodwood Cup) all of whom have claims to be better than their sire. Only the first two horses in the 1840 Chester Cup were placed by the judge and Lanercost is shown well out the back in his owner's colors of Straw with Green sleeves and Black cap. The fourth horse is Lord Eglinton's St. Bennett and the third probably Gilbert Gurney. Although his owner's colors are not known, he was a chestnut and started second favorite. Colonel Peel was the brother of the Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel and his jockey was champion from 1846 (when the first record was kept of jockeys' total wins) until 1852. He certainly would have been champion before 1846 had anyone recorded the details.

Tasker was born in London, the son of a journeyman cabinet maker. The family moved to Chester and at the age of ten he attended the Bluecoat Charity School where he remained until 1822. He studied drawing under Robert Norris. On leaving school he worked for a painter and decorator and soon moved to Leeds to learn the trade of lithographer with the firm of Masser Bros. Due to ill health he was forced to return to Chester where he set himself up as an artist.

One of his first important patrons was Robert Grosvenor, 1st Marquess of Westminster (see lot 12), for whom he painted a number of racehorses including Decoy in 1832 (exhibited at the Liverpool Academy). He was also appointed art teacher to the children of Squire Richard Congreve of Burton Manor on the Wirral. The majority of Tasker's equestrian work was racehorse portraiture and racing scenes. Mitchell notes that the present work was one of his best examples, 'Of his more successful works were Dey of Algiers, winning the Chester Cup in 1840 with Matt up...and The Finish of the Liverpool Cup 1839....His racing scenes abound with figures and the work and time he must have put into them would emphasise that he did not paint purely for money.' (ibid).

In 1850, a commentator Robert Colton wrote about Chester racecourse and the atmosphere of a racemeeting there, 'The course is a vile libel upon the term hippodrome, being neither more nor less similar to running round a plate, so circumscribed is the ground, and dangerous to a large field. But for fun, frolic and jollification, I know no place like Chester' (R. Longrigg, The History of Horse Racing, 1972, p. 141).

A year prior to the present work, Francis Calcraft Turner had also depicted this racecourse in a work that was probably commissioned by the 1st Marquess of Westminster to celebrate the victory of his horse Cardinal Puff, with Sam Darling up, in a field of eighteen runners. Entitled Cardinal Puff Winning the Tradesman's Plate at Chester Races, 1839, it was recently sold by the Executors of Her Grace Anne, Duchess of Westminster at Christie's, Woburn Abbey, 21 September 2004, lot 1020 ($120,000). R.M. Bevan had used this image as the jacket cover for his book The Roodee 450 Years of Racing in Chester, published in 1989.