Thomas J. Healey (1866-1944) was one of the most celebrated American horse trainers of his day. TJ, as he was known to friends and colleagues, had a long and illustrious career working alongside several prominent owners, such as Richard J. Wilson Jnr, and Harry Payne Whitney and Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney, for whom he trained two of the greatest horses of the day, Top Flight and Equipoise. As his Racing Hall of Fame plaque states, 'his death signaled the end of an era, for he was the last of the trainers who had dominated New York racing around the turn of the century.'
TJ had an exceptional art collection that reflected his zeal for racing, which he purchased directly from the artist Henry Stull, one of the most prominent nineteenth-century painters of thoroughbred racehorses in America. Stull’s flattering horse portraits with their highly accurate musculature, the anatomy for which he studied at veterinary college, hung in every prominent New York and Brooklyn Jockey Club. The present lot was offered alongside six other works by Stull from Healey's collection when it last came up for auction at Sotheby's in New York in 2015.
Inaugurated in 1872 for three year old fillies The Alabama Stakes takes place at Saratoga Race Course every August.