Newmarket, exhibiting a new race of jockies

Satire showing horserace at Newmarket. Jockeys are depicted as cats Signed on the stone R Seymour. Hancoloured

Born in Somerset, Robert Seymour was apprenticed to a London pattern designer before taking up art. Turning from history painting, the correct subject for all aspiring young artists, he became a comic illustrator following the style of his contemporary George Crookshank even to the extent of signing some of his work: "Short Shanks". He learnt to engrave on copper and stone and illustrated a number of humorous journals and books in the early 1830s. Repeating one of Henry Alken Snr’s favourite themes, he portrayed the sporting adventures of Londoners who ventured into the countryside. This led the publishers Chapman & Hall to commission Charles Dickens to write a text, Pickwick Papers, to accompany Seymour’s sketches. Only two issues were published before the unstable Robert Seymour committed suicide on 20 April 1836.