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This full length portrait of W G Grace, wearing a scarlet and gold MCC cap standing at the wicket in front of the old Real Tennis Courts at Lord's Ground was painted by British painter and illustrator Archibald Stuart-Wortley.
W G Grace was the first true sporting celebrity, the most famous man in Victorian England, and a cricketer who amassed more than 50,000 runs and almost 3,000 wickets in a first-class career lasting 43 years. He made his first appearance at Lord’s in 1864, aged just 15 and in all he made no fewer than 38 centuries either at Lord’s or for MCC. He described the Club as ‘the chief bulwark of our national game’.
According to MCC Committee minutes of July 16 1888 “a notice was ordered to be posted in the Pavilion inviting a subscription limited to £1.00 by members of the Club in order that a portrait of Mr W G Grace might be painted and eventually hung in the Pavilion.”