The Meadow Brook Hunt, At Westbury, L. I., November, 1892. Mr. Thomas Hitchcock, Jr., Master de ALLEN, W.S. Vanderbilt - 1893

New York: Henry T. Thomas, 1893. Heliotype after Allen's painting by the Heliotype Printing Co. Well-made repairs to upper right corner. Image: 14 1/4 x 19 1/2' sheet size: 17 1/4 x 22 1/2 inches. A fine plate showing the Meadow Brook Hunt Club in action in 1892 , from the nineteenth-century publication 'Sporting Incidents'. The Meadow Brook Hunt Club was established in 1881, when fox hunting in Long Island was still possible and not objected to. Published during America's Gilded Age, 'Sporting Incidents' is a portfolio of elaborate illustrations depicting equine sporting events and accompanied by H. Milford Steele's eloquent descriptions of the history and status of these activities. It was primarily intended to glorify the increasingly fashionable sports of coaching, hunting, polo and steeple chasing. In its introduction, Colonel William Jay, a founding member of the Coaching Club, extolled the beneficial effect such activities had on the health, behaviour, and moral character of both participants and spectators and explained that the "aim of the artist in this book has been to reproduce such horses and carriages with such details of their equipment as may be useful as hints to those who need them, at the same time furnishing a standard of correctness in such matters."