N° d'objet
TN.2008.2331
Titre
A Cricket Match at Mary-le-bone Fields
Date
1748
Créateur
Matériel
Etendue
Ht x W: 88 x 108 cm
Description
A cricket match in progress in a field lined with oak trees. Players wear white shirts and breeches. Early features of the game include curved bats, two stump wicket and a scorers notching stick.
A Cricket Match at Mary-le-bone Fields, 1740
Francis Hayman, R.A. (1708 – 1776)
Oil on canvas
The painting has traditionally been believed to depict
Marylebone Fields (now Regent’s Park). It shows the
early traits of the game of cricket – the curved bat, two
stump wicket, underarm bowling, umpires carrying bats,
and two scorers in the foreground, notching scores on to
sticks. Hayman’s painting acted as the template for
many of the 18th and early 19th century depictions of
cricket. However its early history is still a mystery and it
is not known who commissioned it or when it first hung
at Lord’s.
Francis Hayman was a founder member of the Royal
Academy in 1768 and a set painter at the Theatre Royal
in Drury Lane. Together with William Hogarth he is
credited with the other early depiction of cricket which
decorated one of the supper boxes at the famously
disreputable Vauxhall Pleaure Gardens. An engraving
after the original is in the MCC collection and is ironically
accompanied by the verses:
`Britons , whom Nature has for War design’d / In the soft
Charms of Ease no Joy can find / Averse to wast in
Rest th’inviting Day / Toil forms their Game & Labour is
their Play’
MCC Collection: purchased, 1864
TN.2008.2331
Nom d'objet
Catégorie
