This dramatic pair amply captures the excitement of this famous race, when the four finest race horses bred in France at the time were pitted against each other over two and a half miles, in three heats. The eventual winner was the 5 year old Rocquencourt, by Logic out of Contrition, owned by the Duc d'Orléans, to whom the prints are dedicated by the publisher, John Moore. Rocquencourt won two of the three heats, in the process achieving the fastest time then recorded for a French horse over the distance, of 4 minutes and 42 seconds. He beat Oakstick, belonging to Lord Seymour, Vendredi, owned by Baron de Rothschild, and M. de Saran's horse, Quine. All four are depicted here in full flight in the first plate, where we also see the crowd of gentry and nobility being entertained by acrobats and other side shows, and at the finishing line in front of the grand stand, the moment when Rocquefort won the last heat by a neck.

Charles Hunt (1803-1877) is a very familiar name to collectors in the hugely popular field of sporting prints, here engaged by one of the most prominent publishers of such prints, John Moore, to translate the combined work of the landscape artist, George Bryant Campion (1795-1870), and one of the century's finest portrait painters of horses, John Frederick Herring Snr. (1795-1865).

Two subscriber's proofs, with title and text in both French and English, aquatint engravings, part-printed in colours à la poupée, and finished with fine original hand-colouring, heightened with gum-arabic, each c.530 x 730 mm., framed and glazed.