Portrayals of American racing yachts as primary subjects prove time and again to be the most desired works painted by James E. Buttersworth. He was in New York to record the important matches and regattas in the formative years of the sport and its heyday. The inaugural event for a pair of $1,000 prize cups would in one year become the Cape May Cup Race saw 12 schooners and three sloops sail on July 5th, 1871 (the start on the 4th having been lost to a fog delay). From a point off the hotels of Iron Pier at Cape May, co-sponsors of the race with the New York Yacht Club as one of the precursors to the America's Cup in October, the fleet would race to the Five Fathom Lightship, then to a stake boat and buoy, to finish up at the starting line. Buttersworth has chosen to portray the three top finishers in the race, the schooner SAPPHO, the sloop GRACIE and the schooner DAUNTLESS, in their finishing order while turning the buoy mark.
The beauty of the racing yachts under sail is undeniable. Buttersworth excels at raking the schooners and sloop to provide a sense of their speed, all within an atmosphere that is pushing to rise from a calm to a fresh breeze while intricate layers of clouds accentuate the existing sunlight in his composition. The ocean has a rolling calm nature to it, so the yachtsmen would have had to employ all their skills to achieve top speed and victory. SAPPHO finished the 39⅞ mile course in just over 6 hours, seven minutes in front of the infamous J. Gordon Bennett's DAUNTLESS. The race proved so popular that a formal cup was offered the next season and it helped to establish the founding of the Corinthian Yacht Club at Cape May in conjunction with the one in Philadelphia. This era of yacht racing is most important, and very few artists were on-hand to record it, and none did it better than James Edward Buttersworth.
