Within the annals of racing at Aintree, few pictures document an event as dramatic as this one – one of the most famous hard-luck stories in the race’s record. Painted after the 1936 Grand National, Sir Alfred Munnings’s Davy Jones With The Hon. Anthony Mildmay Up is the portrait of a horse who should have won the race, and of the amateur jockey who, in surrendering that near-certain victory to a broken rein buckle at the second-last fence, was denied the most celebrated amateur win in the history of the sport. That the same rider would, thirteen years later, persuade Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother to buy a horse to share with her daughter, Princess Elizabeth, and thereby lay the foundation of Royal patronage for modern racing, gives the picture a second historical weight beyond the racecourse itself.

Commissioned in 1937 by Francis Bingham Mildmay, 1st Baron Mildmay of Flete (1861-1947), it shows his son, Anthony Bingham Mildmay (1909-1950) – the Leading Amateur jockey four times - on Davy Jones in the paddock at Aintree before the race. Mildmay sits tall and easy, the six-foot frame (‘Nitty’ Mildmay, as he was known in the weighing room) almost too long for the stirrup leathers as he gathers the reins, in the blue-and-white halved silks and quartered cap of his father’s racing colours. To the left, the horse’s lad in cap, tweed jacket and long brown boots leads the chestnut by the bridle. Behind, in conversation, stand Francis Mildmay (on the right) and the horse’s trainer, Harry Wightman, at ease in long coats; beyond them another runner is rugged up and walked in the background, and further horses are attended to on the right. A dust-sheet or quartering cloth lies in the lower right, Munnings’s habitual closing device for a paddock composition. It is a moment of calm before the race, in which thirty-five horses will go to post, only ten finish and a legendary tale be born.

Starting at 100-1, an outsider of outsiders, the six-year-old Davy Jones led from the start, jumped the Canal Turn and Valentine’s brilliantly, and held a clear lead on the final circuit with only Reynoldstown, the reigning champion under Fulke Walwyn, able to live with him. At the second last fence Davy Jones pecked on landing; Mildmay slipped the reins to allow the horse to recover his balance, only to find the buckle at the end of the reins had come undone and the leather had run clean through his hands. Steering with his whip alone, he coaxed his mount over the last fence but could not keep him on the course for the run-in. Davy Jones ran out, and Reynoldstown was left to become the first horse since The Colonel in 1870 to win two Grand Nationals in succession.

The painting Lord Mildmay commissioned from Munnings in the months that followed was, in effect, a private memorial to the race his son had not quite won, painted with all the warmth and none of the bitterness of the event; its commissioning was itself an act of sporting grace.

Munnings had painted the Mildmay family once before in the large conversation piece Lord and Lady Mildmay of Flete, with their Children, Helen and Anthony, with a View towards Ermington in Devonshire. Executed in 1923 and shown at the Royal Academy of 1924, when it returned to the market at Christie’s, New York, on 1 December 1999 it realised $4,292,500, then the auction record for the artist and, until 2007, the highest price paid at auction for a sporting painting. The present work was sold as a companion lot in the same sale, consigned after more than six decades at Flete.

Although often viewed as a traditionalist in an era of rapid artistic change, Munnings’ work is distinguished by its energy, confidence and immediacy, which secured his place as the leading equestrian painter of his generation. The poise and power of Davy Jones is exceptionally realised, Munning’s attention to the coat’s sheen revealing his understanding of equine structure and movement. The composition is carefully crafted so that nothing competes with the horse and rider prominently set against the sky; everything points towards them.

Mildmay continued to race; he shared the Amateur Championship with Mr R. Petre in 1937–38 and dominated the ranks after the war. In 1947 he fell at Folkestone injuring his neck resulting in disabling attacks of cramp; one such attack recurring while racing in the 1948 Grand National and finishing third as a result. In May 1950, swimming off the Devon coast at Flete, he was struck by a further attack and drowned at forty-one.

He was commemorated in numerous race events following (which have since changed their names). In 1953, The Mildmay Course at Aintree was opened in his memory, designed by Lord Mildmay and Sir John Crocker Bulteel for novice horses. Yet perhaps his most notable legacy was, at dinner at Windsor Castle in 1949, a year before his death, when he persuaded the Queen Mother to buy a horse. Mildmay’s trainer Peter Cazalet selected Monaveen who won his first race for her at Fontwell Park, finished second in the Grafton Sefton Chase at Aintree, and then took the prestigious Queen Elizabeth Chase at Hurst Park. The young Princess Elizabeth’s passion was ignited, and continued through 449 winners to her death.