Art in the field
While his grandfather gambled, Alan Brassington sketched the horses at Ireland’s racecourses. One of them, finds Janet Menzies, was successful
WIN, lose or just have another drink: everybody enjoys a day at the races. Aged 12, Alan Brassington wasn’t doing any drinking but he soaked up every other element of racecourse life as he and his grandfather toured Ireland’s racecourses in a VW Beetle. “Every summer holidays we would be off to all the race meetings. There were the local ones round Dublin, such as Phoenix Park (which has gone now), Dundalk and Punchestown, and, of course, the Curragh. Everybody at the Curragh knew my grandfather. We would arrive at the course and he would say, ‘See you later,’ and I would go round drawing the horses and looking at them, and seeing the life of the racecourse. Then he would find me and we went home – I don’t know how successful he was at gambling.”
Brassington fell in love with horse racing. “In those days it was so exciting. I was fascinated by the bookmakers and trying to work out the tic-tac. Those men with their white gloves signalling and somebody standing watching and firing back the information – at the Irish courses all the different bookies had their own codes.”
The family’s finest hour, however, was actually in England. “My grandfather had greyhounds and one of his greyhounds won the Waterloo Cup. They had the greyhound in the hotel bedroom with them. It would have been the Adelphi in Liverpool, I’m sure – my grandfather was in funds at the time.”
Much as Brassington loved the colourful characters on the racecourse, it was the horses that drew him most. “I was able to get so close to the horses – probably closer than you can now – and I fell in love with their beauty.” It was a natural progression for Brassington to go to art college, although initially he trained to do textile design. His big break in equestrian painting came with an exhibition at the Ackerman Gallery in London, where he was discovered by art dealer and racing fanatic Theo Waddington. “Things have progressed from there and I’m lucky enough to be artist in residence for the Royal Ascot Racing Club, which is wonderful because I get to pick and choose what I do.”
Brassington loves the old-fashioned, buff-coloured race programmes at Royal Ascot because they have lots of space for sketches on them. “I’m always sketching on the racecard – and if a horse I’ve sketched wins, I’ll give the card to the owner. I usually give a card to The Queen as well.”
For this year’s Royal meeting, he produced a 6ft by 7ft canvas of the grey horse Lancaster. “I have set it in the 1930s, which I enjoyed doing. But with these near-lifesize works it is technically very difficult. Just stretching the canvas is a big challenge and then you have to get the work to look how you want it to look. But it is worth it because it is so impressive, it really gives you the feeling of the physical presence of the horse. It takes a long time to complete. I work seven days a week on the painting, in a rotation, working on one area and then going back round as the painting evolves. My treat after a long day’s work is mucking out a stable.”
Another of Brassington’s full-size works was a painting for the bookmaker Victor Chandler of Pinch of Salt. “He was in training at one of the Marlborough yards, just a two-year-old at the time. But I’m afraid he didn’t go on to be very successful. When I’m at the races sketching, I will often pick a very beautiful horse but they don’t win the race and the less artistically attractive ones do. Frankel is an example. He was the greatest racehorse for a generation but I don’t want to paint him because he isn’t a particularly good-looking horse. Whereas I painted Dubai Millennium, who was a really gorgeous horse and very successful.”
One of Brassington’s biggest challenges wasn’t a horse at all but a portrait of Lester Piggott, who has a daunting reputation for not suffering fools. Brassington already knew Piggott slightly from those early days at the Irish courses. “With Lester, a lot of people used to try to schmooze him. I think it upset him because he is someone who is quite honest about life. When I went to his home at Newmarket for the sitting, the racing was on the television and he just went on watching the racing while I was painting. It worked really well because he had that same concentration as when he was a jockey, he was absolutely focused.”
‘When I went to his home at Newmarket for the sitting, the racing was on the television and he just went on watching while I was painting’
Contact Alan on 07496 306069 or go to www.alanbrassington.com for pictures and information; look out for his work on show at race meetings throughout the year.