Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice book in great condition. Pages in excellent condition. Hardcover. English. See images for condition.

About the book >.>.> I first saw fifteen of the gems collected by Lord Rosebery on a spring day in 1966. Wandering into Ackermann’s old gallery at the Piccadilly enc of Bond Street not expecting anything in particular there hung Dungannon. Sweetbriar and other Stubbs masterpieces together with what were then known as The Durdans Marshalls. Still in my twenties I had only recently come to work in London and had yet to have much chance to Fadd knowledge of racing pictures to a diligent fifteen year apprenticeship on the turf. However those years had at least seen the eager squirreling of the necessary 5 shillings from pocket money (and later 10 from the stingy wages paid in those days to articled clerks) as each issue of “The British Racehorse” was published. Accordingly I had a fair idea of what a good Stubbs or Marshall should look like even if i hadn’t seen too many in the flesh. None of the glossy pages of the earlier issues of the old “Racehorse” from the days before it dropped its splendid coverage of sporting art had prepared me for the experience of meeting Lord Rosebery’s pictures en masse. Hung together filling two fairly small rooms merely to say they were impressive would be a gross understatement. Anyway they made a huge impression on me and such events at an impressionable age have an effect that lasts as long as you do In 1966 I knew none of the Halifax family nor had ever seen The Durdans or Garrowby. Occasional glimpses of individual pictures at exhibichons were all I saw of them until going to the latter house as part of someone else’s York races house party a bit before 1990. Inevitably that wan pretty fleeting glimpse too and as we never got as far as the Stubbs in the library the second meeting with the collection was a slight disappointment. However a few years later Lord Halifax and I happened to be in office at the same time as Stewards of the Jockey Club and after that occasional stays at Garrowby for York races or Gimcrack dinners confirmed what a truly remarkable collection. (MP)