John Robertson Reid

A Country Cricket Match

1878

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In Tate Britain

Walk Through British Art: 1840

Free entry

Artist: John Robertson Reid 1851–1926
Medium: Oil paint on canvas
Dimensions: Support: 1067 x 1816 mm
frame: 1510 x 2275 x 150 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Presented by Sir Henry Tate 1894
Reference: N01557

Display caption

Robertson Reid was one of several Scottish artists who lived in the south of England during the 1870s, and who revived an almost documentary manner of painting rural subjects. He painted this scene at Ashington in Sussex. Reid delighted in details of folk culture and the varied social strata of rural community life. Here he shows the villagers as a social unit, either playing or watching the cricket match. In fact the match itself is secondary to the interaction of a carefully staged group in the foreground, which includes local gentry, milkmaids and shepherds.

Gallery label, December 2016

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Catalogue entry

N01557 A COUNTRY CRICKET MATCH, SUSSEX 1878

Incr. ‘John R. Reid 78.’ b.l.
Canvas, 42×71 1/2 (106·6×181·5).
Tate Gift 1894.
Exh: R.A., 1878 (77).
Repr: Art Journal, 1884, engr. J. C. Griffiths p.268; Sir Edward J. Poynter, The National Gallery, III, 1900, p.229.

Painted at Ashington in Sussex.

Published in:
Mary Chamot, Dennis Farr and Martin Butlin, The Modern British Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, London 1964, II