Henry Thomas Alken Snr.

Anonymous sale ("The Property of a Lady"), London, Sotheby's, 12 November 1997, lot 262, where acquired.

The 1849 Derby was run by 26 racehorses in perfect weather for stakes of £6,575. It was won by The Flying Dutchman, who was by Bay Middleton out of Barbelle and owned by the 13^th Earl of Eglinton. In Winning the 1849 Derby are depicted the first five horses in the order they finished. The runners-up were Mr. Godwin’s brown colt Hotspur who was second, Colonel Peel’s bay colt Tadmor who was third, Lord Clifden’s Honeycomb who was fourth, and Lord Stanley’s Uriel who was fifth. The remaining 21 runners are all depicted in The Start of the 1849 Derby. 

Henry Alken Snr. was born on 12 October 1785 in Soho, London. Out of the seven Alken children, he and two of his brothers, George and Seffrien, became artists in their own rights. Henry received his initial training from his father Samuel Alken Senior, an architectural draughtsman turned painter, before coming under the tutelage of John Thomas Barber Beaumont. Henry is best known for his drawings of steeplechases and cross-country races; his passion for sporting subject matters and horses was much influenced by Beaumont. Henry is known to have trained young horses for hunting and enjoyed the sport himself. The miniaturist delicacy of Henry’s painted figures is a result of his pupillage under Beaumont; however it is his fascination with speed that sets his work apart from his mentor’s more formalised compositions. Henry exhibited at the Royal Academy of Art twice, in 1801 and 1802, submitting portrait miniatures on both occasions. Before 1819, he worked as a graphic sports journalist, painting mostly with watercolour, and over the next decade he published his works pseudonymously as ‘Ben Tally Ho’.