Whilst he was not known as a devotee of the turf, the chaotic mixing of social groups at race meetings was a theme obviously much liked by Mason with depictions of all the local characters interacting with each other in the excitement of the finish of the race. His images, with all their essentially humorous intent, show the artist’s amusement in the loss of moral and social dignity risked by the upper classes whilst mixing with all levels of society at the racecourse. His work was a humorous confirmation of the carefree and sometimes careless behaviour accompanying sport at that time with the boisterous antics of so many sportsmen and their followers. With the arrangement of his groups of figures he creates a continuous undulation across the whole page and his large-scale comic genre combines genuine sporting narrative with prominent use of caricative types. His scenes are replete with incident and elegance on the one hand, contrasting with the down to earth comic lower classes on the other.

In this drawing no detail of incident was too trivial for Mason to record whilst at the same time it is full of speed, accuracy, economy and vigour of line. The artist has linked the two sides of the scene -the elaborately crowed grouping of spectators on the left and the finishing post on the right - united together by the incident involving the dog and the boy and the woman in the foreground. This has been repeated behind with the horse and jockey stumbling in the background. All the real action of the picture being subordinated to the action of the figures in a horizontal line, rather than depicting detailed distant views. The piled-up chaotic grouping of the spectators falling over each other with excitement contrasts with the speed, power and surging movement of the two racehorses in the centre. 

Despite being an amateur artist Mason’s subject matter appealed to the print sellers of the day for several of his social and sporting scenes were reproduced. His second exhibit at the Royal Academy in 1783 entitled “A Scene in a country town at the time of a race” was engraved, as was his exhibit of 1786 showing “His Majesty reviewing his Troops on Blackheath”. But the dating of our watercolour to circa 1786 can be ascertained by the publication of two engravings published that year by Robert Pollard entitled “A Country RaceCourse with Horses Preparing to Start”, and its companion of “A Country RaceCourse with Horses Running”.

A Country RaceCourse with Horses Running engraved by F & J Jukes and published by Robert Pollard, 20th May, 1786

The son of a vicar of Holy Trinity, Hull, William Mason was educated at St. John’s Cambridge and took holy orders himself. In 1754 he became rector of Aston, near Rotherham in Yorkshire until 1797, and in 1757 through the influence of the Duke of Devonshire he became one of the King’s Chaplains (1757-60), and canon of York 1762-97. A poet and essayist, his first poetic work “Musaeus”, a lament for William Pope, was published in 1744, and he became a devoted friend and admirer of Thomas Gray who once wrote to a friend about Mason saying that “he reads little or nothing, writes abundance, and that with a design to make a fortune by it”. Despite this put-down he become in 1774 the literary executor and author of “The Life and Letters of Gray”, in the preparation of which he had much help from Horace Walpole. Their friendship continued until 1784 when Mason opposed Fox’s India Bill, and offended Walpole by thrusting on him political advice unasked. Twelve years of silence followed, but in the year before his death the correspondence between the two of them was renewed on friendly terms. He was also a frequent visitor to Sir Joshua Reynolds’s studio where he often recorded in letters Reynolds’s work in progress with descriptions of both the sitters and the pigments used.