The term ‘sporting art’ is a relatively modern one, in the 18th and 19th centuries most sporting art paintings would have had country pursuits as their subjects and so featured, horse racing, fox hunting, fishing and shooting and would have been referred to as ‘animal pictures’. The pictures provided a valuable documentation and celebration of the participants success in the aforementioned sports and so would have been commissioned and proudly displayed.
Towards the end of the 19th century with a move towards industrialization and urbanization and away from a more rural lifestyle, the focus began to shift away from country scenes depicting animals and instead began to encompass and diversify and include a wide variety of sport. For the first time women became its subjects and it chronicled the creation of new sports such as rugby and football and became a useful record of social history.
Sporting art remains an ever popular genre today and continues to evolve in the hands of contemporary artists.
Some well-known and notable artists producing seascape and marine art would include; Edouard Manet, Thomas Eakins, Sir John Lavery, Umberto Boccioni, Henry Raeburn, George Bellows, Edgar J. Brown and Lawrence Toynbee.
Some of our artists working within this style include; John Francis, Fleetwood, Paul Oz, Michael Kidd, Alan Fearnley and Nicholas Watts.
