This drawing by George Shepheard shows three men with raised fists and extended legs, interlinked and arranged within a triangular formation. [1] Shepheard is on the left, the engraver Matthew Haughton in the centre, and the engraver and miniaturist Robert Field on the right. It belongs to a series of six drawings by Shepheard in which the three men fight one another. Two watercolours at the Yale Center for British Art are particularly naturalistic and dynamic, capturing the action mid-fight, while an example at the Courtauld shows Field and Shepheard facing each other in traditional boxing poses, enclosed within a doorway, and, in turn, framing an artist, possibly Haughton, at work behind them. The series dates from the early to mid-1790s and ranges from record-like images - Matthew Haughton sparring with the future President of the Royal Academy, Thomas Lawrence - to more imaginative and caricatured conceptions, as exemplified by the present work.

The drawings were created while Shepheard, Haughton, and Field were articled to the engraver, mezzotinter, and print publisher William Dickinson, who was based in New Bond Street between 1787 and 1790, and at 24 Old Bond Street from 1791 until his bankruptcy six years later. A study at the British Museum confirms that Shepheard was working there as early as 1788. [2] During their apprenticeships with Dickinson, the young artists were also enrolled as students at the Royal Academy. Shepheard entered the Schools in 1786, with Haughton and Field following in 1790.

This intriguing and highly unusual series has received little scholarly attention, with the notable exception of Iolo Williams in Early English Watercolours, who referred to the drawings as ‘specially good type of caricatures...consisting of groupings of the same three figures...Haughton, Field and Shepheard.’ [3] On the back of a portrait drawing by Shepheard, depicting a seated Matthew Haughton with boxing ‘mufflers’ at his feet and now in the collection of Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery, reads the inscription: ‘By his most intimate friend George Shepheard. They were students together at Dickensons [sic].’ [4] The third figure, Robert Field, would emigrate to Baltimore in 1794 ‘as part of the influx of British artists and craftsmen enticed by the prosperity of the new republic, [and is] generally recognized as one of America’s leading miniaturists.’ [5] The timing of Field’s departure helps pinpoint the date of the present drawing to the early 1790s.

The late 1780s and early 1790s were marked by a ‘peak of enthusiasm for pugilism’, [6] during which boxing gained ‘a central and cherished place in everyday English culture it has never quite lost.’ [7] Recognised by many as a vigorous antidote to what William Cobbett described as ‘the symptoms of effeminacy’, [8] boxing, to a new generation of younger men, ‘epitomised heroic and patriotic masculinity.’ [9] To Lord Byron, a passionate supporter of the sport, it was ‘the severest [exercise] of all.’ [10] In 1787, The Gazetteer would celebrate that in such decadent times young people were rediscovering those sports ‘by which the national character [would] be preserved in all its masculine properties.’ Boxing would restore the ‘muscular character of the British people,’ and with each match emerged ‘an accession of national strength’ that would deliver ‘an infusion of new blood to the constitutional economy of England.’ [11] Between 1788 and 1790, a series of celebrated bouts between Daniel Mendoza and Richard Humphries, was identified by Pierce Egan, the author of the five-volume Boxiana (1812-1829), as having provoked a public frenzy at a time when ‘boxing [was being brought] into general notice; the abilities of the two pugilists occasioned considerable conversation...the newspapers teemed with anecdotes concerning them...and scarcely [was there] a print-shop in the Metropolis but what displayed the set-to in glowing colours...Humphries and Mendoza were the rage...[they were] followed, patronized, and encouraged. Sparring matches took place at the Theatres and Royal Circus – Schools were established for the promulgation of the art; and the science of SELF-DEFENCE considered as necessary requisite for all Englishmen.’ [12]

A drawing by Shepheard, formerly in the collection of Randall Davies and exhibited at the Burlington Fine Arts Club in 1931–32, shows the diminutive Matthew Haughton boxing with Thomas Lawrence in what appears to be the same room depicted in the Courtauld drawing, almost certainly at Dickinson’s. In the lower left corner, Shepheard watches the contest with fascination; the caricaturist Henry William Bunbury, in the top left, appears more impassive, while Robert Field, standing in the top right, leans casually against the wall with his arms crossed. Lawrence, a formidable boxer, sparred with the renowned bare-knuckle fighter John ‘Gentleman’ Jackson, whose boxing school was just eleven doors from Dickinson’s at 13 Old Bond Street. As a boy of twelve, Lawrence and his friends would frequently ‘go out on holidays to some sequestered field, where, stripping themselves to the waist, they had it out in fair blows.’ [13] As natives of the West Country, with Shepheard born in Herefordshire, Lawrence in Bristol, Field thought to have come from Gloucestershire, and Haughton from Staffordshire, these young artists were raised in a region where boxing mania was a defining aspect of local culture. Boxing was long considered ‘indigenous to the western counties of England...Bristol and its neighbourhood have generally taken the lead in producing the champions of the ring: and certainly the casual boxing-matches that may be witnessed in the streets of that city, even among children, are astonishing to inhabitants of other parts of the kingdom.’ [14] A later group of British artists who shared a similar enthusiasm for boxing was the circle that formed itself around the watercolourist John Varley in the early 1800s, whose house, as Linnell recalled, ‘was a regular school of boxing; everyone practised it, and Varley himself and Mulready used to have great bouts with the gloves.’ [15]