England v Scotland at the Oval, 1879

The oldest international, drawn for the papers a week after it was played.

Work: newspaper engraving
Maker: Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News
Date: 1879
Ground: Kennington Oval, London
Era: The Victorian game · 1870–1900
Source: Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News · via Wikimedia Commons

Seven years old and already a rivalry.

Format

The full-resolution scan, colour-managed to the source — yours to print, study, and explore.

Size

$29.00

The story

Kennington Oval, Saturday 5 April 1879: England against Scotland. A week later the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News printed the match on page nine as a monochrome engraving, its artist uncredited, and for most of its readers that page was how they saw an international at all. The paper had been founded in London only five years earlier, in 1874. The house’s first-game collection already holds the illustrated papers’ 1872 match between the same two nations, so this plate shows the rivalry seven years on, still young enough that each meeting was news worth a full engraving.

See it on your wall

The piece, in the room it was made for

England v Scotland at the Oval, 1879, printed large and framed — in the den, the club bar, the supporters’ bar. Every edition ships ready to become the piece the room is built around.

England v Scotland at the Oval, 1879 framed on the wall

About this reproduction

A reproduction of newspaper engraving — Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News, 1879 — from the copy held by Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News · via Wikimedia Commons. The source. The work was published before 1931 and is public-domain verified.
Printed faithful to that source scan — restore honestly, disclose always. We do not re-colour it, complete it, or interpret it; the piece you receive is the image as it survives, halftone grain honored as history, not damage.
Printed to order on museum-grade cotton-rag stock with pigment inks — the pairing is rated 100+ years.
Colour-managed to the source; the tone of the paper and the ink is the period’s, not ours.
Ships in 5–10 business days, rolled in a heavy-wall tube (framed editions ship flat-packed).
If it arrives less than perfect, we reprint or refund — your choice.

Why our pieces cost more than a poster: a poster is a mass run on wood-pulp stock, colour-corrected to whatever flattered the press that day. This is one sheet, pulled for you, at a size where the maker’s hand is visible — the linework, the halftone grain, the lettering — on materials made to outlast their owner.

From the same hand