- Title:
- The Prize Fight
- Date:
- 1787
- Medium:
- Watercolor with pen and black and gray ink over graphite on moderately thick, moderately textured, beige, laid paper
- Dimensions:
- Sheet: 18 1/8 x 27 3/8 inches (46 x 69.5 cm) and Frame: 29 3/4 x 36 1/4 x 1 1/8 inches (75.6 x 92.1 x 2.9 cm)
- Inscription(s)/Marks/Lettering:
J. Whatman - Fig. 197 in shorter "James Whatman II 1764 - 93, page 337.
Signed and dated in black ink, lower left: "T. Rowlandson 1787"
- Credit Line:
- Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
- Copyright Status:
- Public Domain
- Accession Number:
- B1993.30.113
- Classification:
- Drawings & Watercolors
- Collection:
- Prints and Drawings
- Subject Terms:
- boxes (containers) | canes | carriages | collar | crowd | dogs (animals) | fighting | horses (animals) | men | platform | poles | prize | ring | sporting art | trees | wagons | women
- Access:
- Accessible by request in the Study Room [Request]
Note: As a COVID-19 precaution, the Study Room is closed until further notice. - Curatorial Comment:
- <double click to display>
- <double click to hide>Sports of varying degrees of brutality and gentility flourished during the eighteenth century. Boxing, hitherto an unregulated and amateur sport, became professionalized and commercialized. John Broughton, the most celebrated pugilist of the day, drew up rules which were introduced on August 16, 1743, and were enforced until 1838, when they were superseded by the London Prize Ring Rules. In 1747 Broughton opened an academy in London where gloves were worn for the first time. The Subject of Rowlandson's ambitious watercolor has never been identified conclusively, but it may commemorate the celebrated fight Richard Humphries (the "Gentleman Boxer") and Samuel Martin which took place at Newmarket on May 3, 1786. The contest was attended by several hundred people, including members of the English and French nobility. The London Chronicle reported that "the long contended battle between Martin, the Bath Butcher, and the famous Humphries…lasted about and hour and a half, when the latter beat the former in a terrible manner; upwards of 4000:1 were won and lost on the occasion."--Gillian Forrester,2001-05
- Exhibition History:
- <double click to display>
- <double click to hide>
Rowlandson Drawings from the Paul Mellon Collection (Royal Academy of Arts, 1978-03-04 - 1978-05-28)
Pleasures and Pastimes (Yale Center for British Art, 1990-02-21 - 1990-04-29)
- Publications:
- <double click to display>
- <double click to hide>
John T. Hayes, Rowlandson : watercolours and drawings, Phaidon, London, 1972, pp. 40, 100, no. 37, pl. 37, NJ18 R79 H39 OVERSIZE (YCBA)
Robert Hoozee, British vision : observation and imagination in British art, 1750-1950, , Mercatorfonds Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Brussels , Ghent, 2007, pp. 118, 119, no. 51, fig. 51, N6767 B78 2007 + OVERSIZE (YCBA)
Patricia Phagan, Thomas Rowlandson, pleasures and pursuits in Georgian England , Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Poughkeepsie, N.Y. London, 2011, pp.34,125,130-31, no. 45, NJ18 R79 P53 2011 + OVERSIZE (YCBA)
Simon Schama, Rowlandson in the Round, TLS, the Times Literary Supplement, Issue no. 3963, March 10, 1978, p. 282, Film S748 (SML) Also available Online in TLS Historical Archive (ORBIS)
British Art at Yale, Apollo, v.105, no. 182, April 1977, pp. 279-80, fig. 6, N5220 M552 A7 1977 OVERSIZE (YCBA) Published as April 1977 issue of Apollo; all of the articles may also be found in bound Apollo Volume [N1 A54 105:2 +]
The Cunning Eye of Thomas Rowlandson, Apollo, vol.105,no. 182, April 1977, pp. 279-80, fig. 6, N1 A54 05:2 + (YCBA) Another copy of this article may be found in a separately bound and catalogued copy of this issue located on the Mellon Shelf [call number : N5220 M552 A7 1977 + (YCBA)]
- Link:
- https://collections.britishart.yale.edu/catalog/tms:4105
- Export:
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Thomas Rowlandson, 1756–1827, British, The Prize Fight, 1787
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