Henry Sandham’s Golf—Canadian Club (The Club's The Thing), 1898 is both an exceptionally accomplished watercolour as it is an exceptionally rare visual record by a Canadian artist of the sport of golf, “The Gentleman’s Game”, as it might have been referred to in the day.

Reproduced on the front endpaper spread of Golf Through the Ages: 600 Years of Golfing Art, a 464 page tome by Michael Flannery and Richard Leech, Golf—Canadian Club (The Club's The Thing), must surely be the most famous work of golf by a Canadian artist.

Golf—Canadian Club (The Club's The Thing), 1898 is a particularly important example of Henry Sandham’s work. It unites three of the pursuits at which he excelled: watercolour, sporting illustration, and commercial commission. Commissioned illustration for publishers and commercial patrons represented the very foundation of Sandham’s international reputation. Golf—Canadian Club (The Club's The Thing), 1898 was commissioned by Hiram Walker as they promoted what has been branded as "Club Whisky" to Canadian Club Whisky. To advertise Hiram Walker’s Canadian Club Whisky and distribute Sandham’s watercolour, a photogravure of the watercolour was printed in 1899 by Goupil & Co. of Paris.

This was an ideal assignment for Sandham whose ability to depict sporting life with historical accuracy, narrative vitality, and impeccable draftsmanship had already made him famous. The large-scale composite of the McGill Snow Shoe Club he did for the Notman studio was awarded the silver medal at 1878 Exposition Universelle in Paris. As early as 1870 he and Edward Sharpe had painted the composite photo of the Skating Carnival, Victoria Rink. Sandham’s Tobogganing, Winter Scène of 1886 in the National Gallery of Canada is another celebrated sporting composition. There is also an outstanding and often published watercolour of Bicycling painted in 1887. An original 1896 engraving made from Sandham’s illustration, A Base Ball Match, the Temple Cup match, is presently available in the market for USD 25,000.

Although by the late nineteenth century, golf had become one of the defining pastimes of Canada’s social, professional and business elite, remarkably few Canadian artists chose to depict it. Sandham’s painting therefore occupies a unique place at the intersection of Canadian fine art and sporting history.

Whether based on a specific tournament or an idealized composition assembled from sketches, the work possesses the conviction of lived observation. The location is unspecified, allowing its appeal to all golfers, not exclusively at any one course, suggesting the hypothesis that it is a composite of observation at various courses. Although it had previously been suggested that it may be based on golfing at St. Andrews by the Sea, now the Algonquin Course, New Brunswick, there is not adequate evidence to be definitive. It may well be. Equally plausible is that it is a composite inspired in parts by the Algonquin Course, or conceivably Montreal’s Royal Montreal, or Royal Quebec, maybe The Toronto Golf Club, alternatively Niagara on the Lake or Murray Bay or possibly one close to Boston where he had been living.

Sandham records the entire occasion as a society event. The composition is beautifully orchestrated. Two golfers await their turn while another prepares to putt under the watchful eye of an official dressed in the scarlet coat traditionally associated with club stewards or tournament marshals. Beyond them stretches a substantial gallery of spectators whose dark clothing forms a broad horizontal band, emphasizing the importance of the occasion. At the right, beneath windswept pines, ladies preside over a refreshment table where bottles of Canadian Club Whisky are prominently displayed, transforming the sporting event into a refined social gathering and subtly integrating the sponsor into the narrative. Sandham transforms a golf match into a vivid portrait of Edwardian society at leisure. Golf—Canadian Club (The Club's The Thing), 1898 is a formidable representation of the traditional expression that golf is “The Royal and Ancient Game” or the often and now outdated expression, “The Gentleman’s Game”.

The significance of the work is enhanced by the artist’s stature as head of the art department at William Notman’s renowned Montreal studio, a founding member of the Royal Canadian Academy, and one of North America’s foremost illustrators, Sandham helped define Canada’s visual identity at the turn of the century. His commercial commissions were never mere advertisements; they were sophisticated celebrations of Canadian life executed by one of the country’s finest narrative artists.

Above all, this painting is distinguished by its rarity. Large-scale nineteenth-century Canadian watercolours devoted to organized sport are exceptionally uncommon, making this work not only a masterpiece of watercolour painting but also a significant cultural document. That Golf—Canadian Club (The Club's The Thing), 1898 is reproduced in the front endpaper spread of Golf Through the Ages: 600 Years of Golfing Art, this adds a global celebrity of the image among an affluent golfing community. It is precisely the kind of work sought by discerning collectors: museum-quality in execution, rich in historical resonance, captivating in both subject and beauty and of international recognition.