Brian Clinton is one of Australia’s leading sports and equine artists and the Victoria Racing Club commissioned the painting to celebrate the 150th running of the Melbourne Cup.
Dunraven was owned by prominent pastoralist and racing identity Richard Turnbull who also was VRC chairman at the time the Turnbull Stakes (now a leading Group 1 race) was established in his honour in 1948.
The Greatest Cup Never Run is a mythical race made up of 24 of the greatest ever Melbourne Cup winners.
Broadcast in special digitally created format on Melbourne Cup Day on Channel 7, the field was determined after Racing Victoria Limited chief handicapper Greg Carpenter completed the challenging task of weighting the 143 winners of the 149-year-old race.
The final 24 horses were forwarded to a panel of 22 experts to vote on their finishing order when weights and official barrier draws were taken into account.
Not surprisingly, the winner is the people’s champion Phar Lap (1930 Melbourne Cup victor) followed by Carbine (1890) and modern day legend and three-time winner Makybe Diva (2003-2005).
The painting scene is set in the famous Flemington home straight and features each of the runners in finishing order as determined by the experts. Mossgreen was given the task of marketing the painting during the Spring Racing Carnival.
Richard Turnbull, whose father John also was a well-known pastoralist and racing identity, in 1914 married Emily MacKay, from a family even more prominent than his own.
Emily bought the original Dunraven in the 1920s from Richard’s cousin Sir George Fairbairn and proceeded to fit it out in the style to which she was accustomed.
Befitting their station as the cream of old Melbourne society, the Turnbulls entertained regularly and on a lavish scale including holding the annual Victoria Derby Eve ball in the grounds of the property.
Emily had exquisite taste, a quality inherited by her daughter Anne, who continued to develop Dunraven after she married the highly decorated World War II hero Major Martin Clemens, who with her brothers had attended Cambridge University.
With their four children, they returned to Australia after 15 years with the British Foreign Office and Anne then appointed prestigious architectural firm Yuncken and Freeman to design the new Dunraven as it is today.
A mansion of magnificent proportions, Anne found places for her mother’s fine antique furniture and important paintings while also filling the home with select pieces she had acquired overseas and modern Australian paintings and sculptures.
Some of the finer pieces for auction include a quality French Louis XV style bronze mounted bureau-plat (Lot 114 ) and a pair of Empire bronze and gilt pedestal figures (Lot 113 ).
An 1805 English Regency inlaid mahogany and sofa table (Lot 152 ) is sure to interest auction goers along with a George III English bureau bookcase (Lot 153 ), an 1815 Regency gilt-wood convex wall mirror and a ‘Mediterranean motif’ wall sculpture (Lot 151 ) by well-known sculptor Ian Bow (1914-1990).
One of the more unusual items is a large 18th century Dutch walnut corner cabinet (Lot 171 ), while the George III triple pillar mahogany dining table and 12 matching chairs is another attraction.
Two still life paintings of mixed flowers by famous 17th century French artist Jean-Baptiste Monnoyer – one signed, one not – (lots 178 and 184) are up for auction. A third work was donated by the Clemens family to the Art Gallery of South Australia.