LONDON.- Christie’s Sporting & Wildlife Art auction on 5 June 2013 will feature over 50 paintings of horses, which show a shift in the naturalistic representation of animals throughout the ages. The auction includes 113 lots with works from the 18th to the 20th centuries, ranging from £1,000 to £80,000. Among the highlights of the sale are four paintings by John Frederick Herring Senior, a successful and prolific 19th Century painter who counted Queen Victoria among his patrons.

John Frederick Herring’s pair of oil paintings, The Duke of Grafton’s Oxygen, winner of the Oaks; and Colonel J. Peel’s Lochinvar are among the top lots in the sale and are estimated to fetch between £30,000 and 50,000. They form part of an important collection of paintings once owned by the late Lord Matthews, former CEO of the company which ran the Ritz Hotel in London. Also featuring in this collection are 12 watercolours depicting the Newmarket races by Lionel Dalhousie Robertson Edwards, which capture the exciting atmosphere of the meetings at one of the country’s busiest and most important racecourses.

Tom Rooth, Specialist in Sporting and Wildlife Art said: “This sale features an impressive selection of paintings, with over 50 representations of horses that show the advancing techniques developing through the ages. In addition to works by prolific painters Thomas Spencer and John Frederick Herring Senior, the paintings of Newmarket racecourse really show how advanced Lionel Edwards’ representations were in comparison with artists working during the 18th Century. It is a real pleasure to be offering such a broad selection of quality paintings.”

There was a marked development in the artistic representation of horses during the late 19th Century. The turning point came following Eadweard Muybridge’s photographic studies of horses, which showed that a horse’s legs moved in a completely different rhythm than previously thought. The speed of photography proved what the human eye could not grasp; that a trotting horse lifted all four feet off the ground.

The Newmarket pictures by Lionel Edwards show how far this new intelligence had been assimilated by the 20th Century. One of the most vibrant paintings of the collection, Newmarket, The Start – 2000 Guineas (estimate: £4,000 – 6,000), shows the frenzied start of one of the country’s five British Classic races. The tangle of the horses’ legs and a blur of colour embody the intense first moments of the race in a realistic way.

One of the earliest paintings in the sale also portrays horses racing in Newmarket, for a wager in the 18th Century. The chaise match run on Newmarket Heath on Wednesday 29 August 1750 (estimate: £15,000 – 20,000), shows how artists previously understood a horse’s movement. Their fore and hind legs are stretched out in front and back, unlike more modern representations, which show the horse’s legs moving more naturally.

In addition to horse racing, the sale features paintings representing hunting, fishing and shooting scenes, as well as domestic pets, water birds and wild animals. The top lot in the sale is The mud-bath by David Shepherd (estimate £60,000-80,000), a painting of African elephants enjoying the mud during the heat of the day.