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THE Museum is celebrating a special
acquisition after successfully bidding for an oil painting depicting a
horse on Nantwich Racecourse, dating from 1781.
The painting - Mr Walsh’s
Perdita, with jockey up, on Nantwich Racecourse - is by artist
Benjamin Killingbeck who specialised in painting horses and dogs. It
came up for auction at Christie’s in London and we had to act quickly to
secure sufficient funding to enable us to bid.
Grants were successfully
applied for from the Museums, Libraries and Archives / Victorian and
Albert Museum Purchase Grant Fund which supplied £3,750 and The Art
Fund, the UK’s leading art charity, which contributed £1,797. Nantwich
Town Council provided £500.
With funding in place, the
Museum was able to bid and was successful in purchasing the painting for
well below estimate at £7,500.
Museum Curator Anne Wheeler
said: “This was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Nantwich and we
had to pull out all the stops to try to bring this superb painting back
home. It is the only known painting of Nantwich races and as such we
felt it imperative that it should come back to the town and be displayed
in the Museum where the people of Nantwich and visitors to the town can
all enjoy it and learn about a little-known aspect of the town’s
heritage.
"Acquiring the painting was
like a race in itself – we had all kinds of hurdles we had to clear
before we could set our sights on winning. After sorting out the
finances, etc, we had to keep our fingers crossed for things to go in
our favour at the auction. During the bidding my heart was thumping and
when the hammer went down confirming our bid, I felt as if I’d run and
won a race myself (and I wasn’t even doing the bidding)!”
Andrew Macdonald,
Acting Director of The Art Fund, said: “With its bold, yet pared
down, style and muted tones, this painting captures the mood of a
typical English day at the races, and is a wonderful scoop for
Nantwich. The Art Fund is pleased to have helped bring the work to
its rightful home, where it will shed light on the town’s hidden
past and showcase the style and sporting subject matter of 18th
century artist Benjamin Killingbeck.”
Janet Davies,
from the V&A / MLA Purchase Grant Fund, said “We were delighted to help
the Museum in its bid for this work, which is perfect for the
collection: an attractive painting but also an informative record of
Nantwich history.”
THE Nantwich Races were held for a few days
every June / July from 1729 to 1824 and were an important part of the
town’s social calendar. The racecourse was on Beam Heath land in Alvaston and was particularly popular with county gentlemen who
travelled to Nantwich and stayed overnight in the town.
The racecourse was ploughed up
in 1824 and sadly no evidence of it remains. Many people have no idea
that there was ever a racecourse in Nantwich.
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