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Full length group portrait of six boys in a grassy landscape. Two boys with makeshift cricket bats. The focus of the picture is the cricket bat thrown high in the air.

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Robert James Tossing for Innings Oil on canvas; circa 1843 MCC Collection Robert James was a Nottingham painter, born at Burton-on-the-Wold in Leicestershire. He first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1841 and is best remembered for his portraits of children of which this is his undoubted masterpiece. He painted further pictures on this same theme of Victorian chimney sweeps which are unusual in that their subject deals with the moment before a match begins.