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This painting is as much about the game as about the three sitters in the foreground: a professionally made
bat of correct proportion, a worn ‘pitch’, a hat to stop the ball, ‘suitable’ dress and distant figures describing the
act of bowling.
The painting stands as exceptional testimony to the time-honoured tradition of cricket in one of the great
English schools and is all the more unusual among depictions of early cricket in that we know the names of the three principal sitters.They were the Mason brothers of Necton Hall, Norfolk with Ambrose Humphrys. Humphrys, shown here leaning on his cane, was the patron of the artist Henry Walton.
At the time this painting was commissioned Walton was studying under the German neoclassical painter Johan
Zoffany, known for the first group portrait of the Royal Academicians 1771-1772. Zoffany’s influence in terms of technique and composition is clear. Indeed, the school master figure seems directly lifted from his portrait of Richard Cosway in the Royal Academicians’ piece.
