New Year Races 1839 by J.M. Skipper

The Painting

Race course, Adelaide | National Library of Australia NK6756

This is a watercolour by John Michael Skipper currently titled "Race course, Adelaide" and dated 1 January 1840 (by a caption on the reverse). This detailed study concludes it is actually of the New Year Races in January 1839.

S T Gill probably attended the 1840 races in the days after his South Australian arrival. So if the picture was 1840 it would have featured as part of his timeline. This detailed analysis rules that out.

John Michael Skipper painted this highly dramatic watercolour of the New Year horse races in Adelaide, South Australia. Titled Race course, Adelaide (NLA NK6756), the painting is captioned on the reverse: "Race Course, Adelaide, January 1st 1840, J.M. Skipper".

The picture is busy and colourful. In the foreground right, a course official attends to two colour clad jockeys and their mounts after a match race. Behind, in the right middle ground, five riders in racing colours are within four horse lengths and pushing each other to the finish post; the victor past by a length-and-a-half.

Frighteningly close to the foreground trio (left foreground), five or six "gentlemen riders" are, if not racing, then riding at pace, raising dust to their mounts' undersides. Two riders wear top hats. One is in blue uniform.

In the middle ground the crowd lines the edge of the racing field. Behind them is a two tiered grandstand and marquees with barely stirring flags. In the background the Mount Lofty Ranges provide blue-green relief to the dusty race course on Adelaide's southeast Park Lands.

News Reports of the Races

I compared the scene with the newspaper reports for the 1840 New Year races.¹ However they didn't correspond.

One thing standing out in the painting is the race of the six riders, one of whom is in blue uniform. These riders are not jockeys in racing colours; their dress indicates they are "gentlemen riders".

The New Year races were held over three days – 1 to 3 January. The first day had a race specifically for gentlemen riders known as the Ladies' Purse. In 1840 only two horses ran in that race. So the painting is not that race.

The subject is clearly the annual races. Could it be a different year?

1841 was little better and the depressed years 1842 to 1844 saw barely anything of a race carnival. 1845 however was a huge revival and that event would prove a later attraction for S.T. Gill to sketch (see works below). However Skipper's picture is not of the 1845 races, a year when the grandstand was closer to the action and fronted the home straight.

But 1839 does match. On the first day of that year, the Ladies' Purse featured six gentlemen riders – the same number as in Skipper's painting. The entrants were Mr. Jones' grey gelding "Charley", Mr. Handcock's brown mare "Miss Cranky", Mr. J. Gleeson's brown mare "Munster Lass", Captain Charles Berkeley's black horse "Nigil", Mr. Lipson's brown horse "Wilful" and Mr. Lines's brown horse "Peter".²

Captain Berkeley – formerly of the King's Royal Rifles – is one who could be expected to wear uniform.

Captain Charles Berkeley

In fact he became renowned for doing so. A decade later, in 1850,

Captain Berkeley, Inspector of Police, not having the fear of the colonial sirocco before his eyes, astonished the natives by appearing in full uniform, which, by-the-by, was brilliant in the extreme, and must have given our newly-arrived friends a most exalted idea of the respectability of "the force." ³

In Skipper's painting, the slightly built rider wears a silver trimmed blue cap with a chin strap, a blue jacket and blue trousers with a broad silver stripe all the way down the side of the leg from waist to boot. He has a silver collar, silver jacket braid highlighting his narrow waist and white gloves.

This uniformed rider was just as magnificently attired when he stood for his portrait by his artist wife, Martha Berkeley (1813 - 1899) (see works below).

Martha's portrait resolves her husband in fine detail. Captain Charles Berkeley (c. 1801 – 1856) is a serious looking, slightly built, narrow waisted man with receding hair counterbalanced by a neat military moustache. The same uniform is there, although Skipper's broad leg stripe is now resolved in Martha's detail as twin stripes.

Skipper's rider in uniform is almost certainly Captain Charles Berkeley. This adds further weight to Skipper's painting being the races of 1839, not 1840. Despite the errant back note, the painting is well and truly historically grounded, though it looks like Skipper has gone for excitement over realism by painting two simultaneous races. And he's swapped Berkeley's black horse for Jones' grey gelding.

As an aside, Charles Berkeley would definitely have also attended the 1840 races, not as a rider, but as the secretary of the Turf Club from its founding in 1838. In that role, after the first day's racing, he got an urgent message to the public banning dogs on the course. The request was not entirely successful in later years, as we see in S.T. Gill's wash drawing of the 1845 races.

Conclusion

By comparison with newspaper reports, it's clear Skipper's painting is of the 1839 New Year Races in Adelaide, and features Captain Charles Berkeley in uniform. In particular the picture is of the Ladies' Purse for "gentlemen riders" raced for on 1 January 1839.

Notes

• 1. South Australian Register, 11 January 1840: 7. <http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article27441090>
• 2. Southern Australian, 9 January 1839: 3. <http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article71685014>
• 3. Adelaide Observer, 5 January 1850: 1 (Supplement to the "Adelaide Observer."). <http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article159531436>