Sunderland v. Aston Villa

The great Victorian football canvas — the match in oil, mid-attack, the crowd packed to the touchline.

Work: Sunderland v. Aston Villa (oil on canvas)
Maker: Thomas M. M. Hemy
Date: 1895
Ground: Newcastle Road, Sunderland
Era: The Victorian game · 1870–1900
Source: Thomas M. M. Hemy, 1895 · Wikimedia Commons

Period crests or marks appear inside this historic work. They are reproduced solely as part of the historical document, under the house’s historical-document doctrine — nothing modern is used or sold.

Somebody always sees the future first and paints it.

Format

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

Size

$29.00

The story

The first major painting of the professional game. In 1895 Thomas M. M. Hemy — a marine painter by trade — set his easel at Newcastle Road and painted Sunderland mid-attack against Aston Villa: the match in oil, the crowd packed to the touchline, the sport admitted to the gallery while still in its boyhood. Nobody had thought football worth a serious canvas before; Hemy saw what it was becoming and painted it like a sea battle. The goalkeeper wears his everyday cap — the uniform of the position not yet invented. Somebody always sees the future first and paints it.

See it on your wall

The piece, in the room it was made for

Sunderland v. Aston Villa, 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.

Sunderland v. Aston Villa framed on the wall

About this reproduction

A reproduction of Sunderland v. Aston Villa (oil on canvas) — Thomas M. M. Hemy, 1895 — from the copy held by Thomas M. M. Hemy, 1895 · 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.