Mid-Week Practice at Stamford Bridge

This atmospheric painting of players training at Chelsea Football Club’s Stamford Bridge ground is a surviving highlight of the landmark 1953 exhibition, ‘Football and the Fine Arts’.

Lawrence Toynbee entered the painting for a competition launched by the Football Association that year to mark its 90th anniversary. From 1,710 entries, 150 paintings were chosen for the exhibition. Toynbee was awarded a prize of £1,000 for his entry, alongside another notable prizewinner, LS Lowry, for his painting Going to the Match.

Toynbee had been an excellent sportsman at school and university, before training as an artist at the Ruskin School of Drawing in Oxford. In the 1950s he began to combine his two great skills by executing his first sporting subjects. His paintings are now celebrated for their depictions of sporting drama, as well as for capturing the individual character of each particular venue.

Mid-Week Practice at Stamford Bridge shows the Chelsea players practising at the ground that has been the club’s home since its formation in 1905. The painting shows the look of the stadium in the 1950s, during a period of transformation. Ted Drake had become manager in 1952 and set about making changes that led to the team’s first major trophy success by winning the League championship in 1954-55.

Toynbee’s work is held by a number of major institutions, including the Royal Academy of Arts, the Government Art Collection and the National Portrait Gallery. Mid-Week Practice at Stamford Bridge now joins the National Football Museum, the centre for the preservation, conservation and display of football art and memorabilia in the UK.