Description

Full length portrait of Reade as a young boy wearing a fine green all-in-one playing trap ball. On the grass is the shoe-shaped trap and discarded top hat. Church steeple in the background.

Display caption

John Chandos Reade as a Boy, c.1790 William Redmore Bigg (1755-1828) MCC Collection Oil on canvas TN.2008.2327 Full length portrait of, Sir John Chandos Reade, 7th Baronet of Barton, wearing the fine green costume of a Harrow schoolboy, holding a small trap bat and ball. He stands next to a mechanised trap ‘shoe’. Trap ball was played alongside other ball sports such as cricket in the mid eighteenth century. It was primarily a batting and fielding exercise and had a basic premise: place a small ball on the trap, use the lever to launch it into the air, and then hit it with a small flat-faced bat called a trap stick. There were a number of regional variations to the shape of the bat, but it remained a simple, popular pastime for generations. English painter William Redmore Bigg was known for his rustic genre paintings and his charming portraits of children. He was elected a member of the Royal Academy in 1814.