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A Cricket Match at Mary-le-bone Fields, 1740
Francis Hayman, R.A. (1708 – 1776)
MCC Collection: purchased, 1864
Oil on canvas
TN.2009.2331
The painting has traditionally been believed to depict Marylebone Fields (now Regent’s Park). It shows the early traits of the game of cricket – the curved bat, two stump wicket, underarm bowling, umpires carrying bats, and two scorers in the foreground, notching scores on to sticks. Hayman’s painting acted as the template for many of the 18th and early 19th century depictions of cricket. However its early history is still a mystery and it is not known who commissioned it or when it first hung at Lord’s.
Francis Hayman was a founder member of the Royal Academy in 1768 and a set painter at the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane. Together with William Hogarth he is credited with the other early depiction of cricket which decorated one of the supper boxes at the famously disreputable Vauxhall Pleaure Gardens. An engraving after the original is in the MCC collection and is ironically accompanied by the verses:
`Britons , whom Nature has for War design’d / In the soft Charms of Ease no Joy can find / Averse to wast in Rest th’inviting Day / Toil forms their Game & Labour is their Play’
