Celebrating the victory of J. Gordon Bennett's HENRIETTA in the prestigious and important 1866 transatlantic schooner challenge, a professional British yachting crew led by two officers and two female companions wave encouragingly to the departing racers. Members of the New York Yacht Club advanced the prestige and stakes of yacht racing with this epic event, each wagering $30,000 on the winner-take-all affair. Captured in the newspapers, barroom tales, and numerous visual works of art, the public's imagination and interest was widespread and passionate. This fine period folk art painting of the legendary race from New York to England is by the American artist William Carr. Carr inscribes the work verso with its title, date, and his Jacksonville, Illinois hometown.
Identification of the racing schooners is assisted by the special colored flags worn by the yachts. Foremost in the painting, wearing the blue identifier atop her mast is HENRIETTA, owned by renown newspaper publisher and infamous yachtsman James Gordon Bennett, Jr. Following closely is VESTA, owned by tobacco baron and racehorse afficionado Pierre Lorillard, who initiated the competition with a dinner party boast over turtle soup that his 105-foot schooner was the fastest yacht afloat. In the third position is New York Yacht Club members George and Franklin Osgood's famous FLEETWING. Each wagered to be victorious in the head-to-head-to-head match race across the Atlantic Ocean. Bennett's HENRIETTA was the first to the finish off the Isle of Wight with a time of 13 days, 21 hours and 45 minutes winning the then-unrivaled and unheard of purse for any race of $90,000. This equates roughly to a value of $9 to $15 million in today's markets!
The folk art styling of William Carr's painting is an added bonus in this period view of the historic race. The schooners are cresting, hard driven and harmoniously composed in their interaction with the wind. A late winter squall - the race began on Dec. 11 and finished on Christmas Day- shows with the streaking downpour coming through the heavy clouds. The race was so widely celebrated that numerous artists painted its moments, and the prestigious lithography firm of Currier & Ives made multiple scenes of this race, mostly from the originals of James E. Buttersworth. Carr locates the three schooners and the red-uniformed longboat crew in the southern reaches of Long Island Sound Inlet, and has the pair of British officers attired in their formal blue outfits saluting the competitors as they finish their challenging Atlantic Ocean crossing at the south of England and the annuals of yacht racing immortality.
