William Powell Frith, qui floruit, as they say, in the middle of the 19th century, was dismissed by critics as an "anecdotal" painter; he was popular merely for the Dickensian humour with which he treated the "types" and incidents he portrayed. His bestknown work, now in the Tate Gallery in London, is entitled Derby Day, which is, of course, today.
The Epsom Derby is the most famous of the five English Classics, and was inaugurated on May 4th, 1780, by the 12th Earl of Derby. The event conjures up a unique picture of champagne and sunshine, strawberries and cream, parasols, top hats and My Fair Lady, , and most of the time the elements have acquiesced in this sybaritic image.
The Derby day Frith immortalised, for example, was the 77th, that of 1856 when the race was won by Ellington. He shows it to have been a fine, bright, sunny afternoon except for a wisp or two of fracto-stratus that drifts against the wind in artistic oxymoron across a sky that is otherwise devoid of cloud. But the elements on Derby day were not always so benign.
In 1820, for example, the race was run on May 18th and a fierce gale the previous night uprooted tents and booths, so a scene of utter devastation greeted racegoers the following morning.
Ten years later, in 1830, torrential rain and hail disturbed the peaceful scene to the extent that there were no fewer than 13 false starts before the horses finally got under way; Priam won on this occasion, an hour after the scheduled starting time. In 1839, the year that Bloomsbury was first, it snowed right through the race.
Charles Dickens - who was, coincidentally, a friend of William Frith - went down by train to see Macaroni win in 1863. Rain was a problem that year, too: he described Epsom railway station as "an oasis of boards on a sea of mud". And in 1891 the heavy rain was such that all the jockeys, wearing the racing materials of the day, were wet enough at the end of the race to be two pounds overweight when they weighed in.
But the very worst Derby day was the 132nd, when the so-called Coronation Derby was run on May 31st, 1911. Shortly after the race, a fierce thunderstorm, with "hailstones as big as walnuts", and lightning at a rate of 30 strokes a minute, developed over Epsom Downs. It struck terror into the returning racegoers, and 17 people and four horses were killed during the storm that followed, or in related incidents.