Sporting life in all glory – and gory (From Darlington and Stockton Times)

Sporting life in all glory – and gory

3:57pm Friday 23rd April 2010 in Arts

A PAINTING by Stubbs and pictures of racehorses by other leading British artists of the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries have been brought together for a major exhibition at the Bowes Museum.

Private owners, including the Earl of Strathmore, and a number of galleries around the country have lent works – though one painting, whose owner lives comparatively close to the Barnard Castle museum, was simply too big to get through the door.

Lord Zetland’s oil painting of a horse called Voltigeur, which won a famous race against its speediest rival, The Flying Dutchman, in 1851, measures about 3m wide and 2m high.

“Lord Zetland would have loaned it, but unfortunately, it is just too big,” said curator Laura Layfield. “We will be making do with a photograph if it instead.”

British Sporting Art opens on May 11 and continues through the summer until October 10, with horse racing and hunting as chief topics – it will include a picture by Alfred Munnings, one of the greatest painters of British thoroughbreds in the early 20th century – but embracing other sports, too, such as boxing, football, cricket and even ferreting.

The theme was inspired by John Bowes, founder of the museum, an enthusiastic racehorse owner and the first to win the renowned Triple Crown after his horse, West Australian, won the Derby, St Leger and 2,000 Guineas in 1853. A painting of this horse has been loaned by Glamis Castle, family seat of the Strathmores, from whom John Bowes was descended.

Bowes, known as the Mystery Man of the Turf, owned the famous Streatlam Stud, which produced some of the greatest horse race winners of the mid-19th century, including four Derby winners, of which Cotherstone was one.

The exhibition will explore his racing interests and the wider genre of sporting art, which reached its height during the 18th century when horse racing fervour swept the nation.

It was a golden age for sporting artists, the most famous being Stubbs, who overcame the racing genre tag as a “low form of art” to produce what would now be called blockbusters for the Royal Academy.

The exhibition will offer a chance to see work by George Morland, a supreme painter of animals in domestic settings, and, by contrast, a very large picture by Landseer showing an otter being speared. This picture is being loaned by the Laing Gallery, Newcastle, where it used to be on permanent show, but is now considered too gory for contemporary sensibilities, so this will be a rare opportunity to see it.

The museum’s own paintings, Cotherstone by J F Herring Jnr (below, right), and Beeswing by John Ferneley will feature.

The former was bought at auction from Christie’s in New York in 2006 – Cotherstone being one of Bowes’ most successful racehorses – while the latter is on longterm loan. Beeswing won 51 of 64 races and became a celebrity, with several pubs named after her.

There will be prints by Gillray, who produced detailed portraits of boxers and comical sporting scenes. Contemporary work includes life-like bronzes of racehorses, deer and gundogs by the leading British sculptor Sally Arnup.

In addition to the exhibition, two new galleries open on May 11, one dedicated to British decorative arts – the Bowes is the leading fine and decorative arts museum in the North – showing designs from Tudor to Victorian times. The other, featuring fashion and textiles, will be the leading UK gallery of its type, with dresses, European silks, tapestries, embroidery, lace and quilts from the 16th to the late 20th centuries.