Raoul Millais

April V and Tom Walls in a Loose Box, Alfred Grenfell Haigh, 1932

Oil on canvas
70 x 117 cm

Haigh (1870 - 1963), born in Chester, was the son of a cotton broker and the great-grandson of Daniel Haigh, master of the Surrey Hunt. After training in Paris for a short time, Haigh kept the vast amount of his artistic career private, which means that his work rarely comes onto the market. However, he was the subject of various equestrian portraits himself, by artists such as Abraham Cooper and J.F. Herring. Senior. The work depicting Tom Walls, has a particularly interesting history. Walls was a well know actor and producer. However, he also had a separate profession of racehorse training. In this piece, Walls is shown with April V, who went on to win the Derby, making Walls the only Epsom based trainer to have ever won the race.