George Tattersall (1817-1849)

The Pictorial Gallery of English Race Horses; Containing Portraits of all the Winners of the Derby, Oaks, and St. Leger Stakes, during the last twenty years...

London: Henry G. Bohn, 1850

8vo., (10 ¼ x 6 ¾ inches). Half-title (a bit browned throughout). Engraved frontispiece; 72 fine engraved full-page plates (one or two pale stains); 19 in-text engravings. Contemporary half red crushed morocco, paper boards, the spine in six compartments with five raised bands, gilt-lettered in two and equestrian ornaments in the rest, top edge gilt (upper hinge cracked but holding; extremities a bit worn).

Provenance: Bookplate of Kenneth Franzheim (1890-1959) to front pastedown; manuscript list of winners from the years 1851-56 to verso of rear blank.

First edition. Illustrated with 92 engravings after paintings by Cooper, Herring, Hancock, Alken, Hall, and other sporting artists (though title page cites only 90). Tattersall, an architect as well as a sporting artist, was the son of the second Richard Tattersall, whose father founded Tattersall’s Horse Market, the main auctioneers of race horses in Ireland and the UK.