A Portrait of Walter Selby Buckmaster c1910 Watercolour by Rodney Player (British)
$3,500
Art Sz: 11/2"H x 7 3/4"W
Frame Sz: 19 1/4"H x 15"W
Provenance:
Sladmore Gallery, Berkeley Square, London;
From The Collection of Nicholas Colquhoun-Denvers, former chairman of The HPA (Hurlingham Polo Association)
Nicholas John Arthur Colquhoun-Denvers (January 1949 – 29 January 2026) was a British polo official. He was the chairman of the Ham Polo Club from 1995 to 2018, as well as the chairman of the Hurlingham Polo Association from 2009 to 2012, and the president of the Federation of International Polo from 2014 to 2018. Earlier in his life, he had played on the British Army Polo Team. Colquhoun-Denvers died on 29 January 2026.
Rodney Player was a well-known British military artist and painter, celebrated for his highly detailed, life-like watercolors of historical figures and military uniforms. He specializes in historical representations, particularly British cavalry and Hussar regiments from the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Walter Selby Buckmaster (16 October 1872 – 30 October 1942) was a British polo player in the 1900 Summer Olympics and in the 1908 Summer Olympics.
Biography
He was born on 16 October 1872 in Wimbledon, Surrey, the son of Thomas Walter Buckmaster (1845–1873) and Emma Caroline Venables (1848–1875). His father's sister, Maria Sarah Buckmaster was the mother of Alfred North Whitehead, the renowned mathematician and philosopher. Buckmaster was educated at Repton and Trinity College, Cambridge. He played association football for both Repton and Cambridge and was a member and later Captain of the Cambridge polo team.
From Cambridge he had a career in the stock exchange joining with a fellow old Old Reptonian, Charles Armytage-Moore to become a founding partner in Buckmaster & Moore. He kept up his interest in sport particularly polo, and in 1900 he was part of the BLO Polo Club Rugby Polo at the 1900 Summer Olympics polo team which won the silver medal. In 1908 as a member of the Hurlingham Club he won the Olympic silver medal again. Buckmaster was a member of the winning team in the International Polo Cup, (also called the Newport Cup and the Westchester Cup) in 1902 playing at Hurlingham. The trophy was created in 1876 and was played for by teams from the United States and Great Britain.
He married Ida Sarah Blyth in June 1896 in St Marylebone Church, London. They had two daughters, Eulalie Agnes Selby in 1901 and Beryl Evelyn Tracey in 1904. Although he was over age (42), he served in the Great War (1914–1918) in the Service Sanitaire (Ambulance), attached to the French Army.
Buckmaster lived initially in London's Mayfair at addresses in South and Stratton Streets during the war years and early 1920s. In 1928 moved to the country living at Moreton Manor, Moreton Morrell and became Master of the Warwickshire Foxhounds. He died on 30 October 1942 at Warwick aged 70.