Tales from the Body Box - Brown Jack

Every now and then, I like paint a portrait model of a famous racehorse. Usually, they're current stars from the UK/Ireland racing scene, horses which have caught my attention for their talent and character, and painted either during their career, or shortly after retirement. You can see them all on this tag.

But recently, I read a book written in the 1930s, about one of the most famous horses in his own day - Brown Jack. His Wikipedia entry is very dry reading, listing his racing achievements without touching on why he was so loved in his own time, or remains famous for racing fans today. This biography page does a much better job of it - this is a horse who famously liked cheese sandwiches and would receive parcels of cheese in the post from young fans. A horse who'd make guest appearances at the racetrack - not only the days when he was racing, but to hang out in a fenced off playpen, so the people could meet him and give him a pat. 

He was one of those oddly beloved equine 'celebrities', whose fame and popularity make them as important in racing history as any prolific stallion, Triple Crown champion, or Grand National winner.

So I decided he thoroughly deserved to join my little herd of racehorses, and got to work...

Here he is, with my own copy of his biography forming the perfect caption!

Because of his era, all Brown Jack's photos are in black and white, so I based his colouring on this portrait by famous English artist Alfred Munnings. I tried to incorporate the art style a little bit, too, without letting it look too messy on the model, as brushstrokey impressionist colouring would just look like bad painting out of context, and I really wanted him to work as a model in his own right.

There's another painting of him inside the book, a portrait by Lionel Edwards this time.

And here he is with one of the photographs. I chose the mould which looked most like him anyway, but it did have some extensive modification for a better match : profile tweaked, mane plaited, tail shortened, shoulder muscles filled, topline adjusted along the spine and rump, belly enlarged, gelding operation, knee adjusted, hooves larger and longer. Quite a lot of work before I could even get started painting!

I did the standard fake-scenery photoshoot with him as well, here he is from several different angles...

Tales from the Body Box - Paragon, a portrait

This horse is not particularly famous.
He isn't a sporting legend, or a much-loved character from fiction or history, nor is he a founding father of his breed. Most horsey people will never have heard of him, nor had I beforehand, but from the very first time I encountered him, I liked this horse.

His story starts on a day out one summer, visiting Grimsthorpe castle, a grand home full of art and antiques, beautiful architecture and design. We were taken round by guided tour, no free-flow wandering, and as always, it was the horses in the paintings which I spent most time looking at, trying to take a moment longer to inspect the colours, the tack, the art style, then having to rush to catch up before the tour moved too far away. 

At one point, we were standing on the staircase, and the guide was telling about a huge, bigger-than-lifesize painting of a horse, some behind the scenes whispering that it might be a Stubbs which they wanted to have investigated by experts, I looked but it was a relatively bland painting - dark, dull, a lifeless looking plain horse standing still. Maybe it turns out to be a Stubbs, if so it's not one of his best.

The matching counterpart on the opposite side of the wall was another matter. A big imposing stallion, tense and alert and showing the white of his eye, and his colour beautifully detailed in a way which makes a modern horse-colour-enthusiast stop and stare. Bay sabino, brilliantly captured in oils, with white flashes and roaning, and several dark spots. I looked for as long as I could, then had to move along with the tour, no photography allowed inside the house I just had the image of this horse imprinted in my mind's eye, to try not to forget him.

I haven't been able to find the painting online anywhere since, but you can just about see him, peeping out from behind the left shoulder of the emperor Hadrian in this photo on the castle's own website.

A year or more later, another summer, another day out - Wimpole Hall, and this time free to wander at will through the mansion. I came into one room, and there was a huge horse painting above the mantelpiece, I made a bee-line for it, and there, in the lower right corner - the same horse. 

There's no mistaking those spots, three white and one brown just behind his shoulder, and all the white markings the same, too. I'd found the sabino stallion for a second time! 

And here, the painting had a caption plaque, crediting Dutch artist Abraham van Diepenbeeck but also containing the first clue in figuring out who he might be : 'Six Menage Horses belonging to William Cavendish, 1st Duke of Newcastle'. 
William Cavendish was one of the most prominent 17th century writers on horsemanship and haute-école dressage training; if you've read any good books on the history of horse riding, schooling, or tack, the chances are you've seen some illustrations or quotations from his work. So this gave me a great starting point to research that horse, when I got home I started looking up the name of his book, and found this title page :

There, on the right : see three white spots behind the shoulder. It's that bay sabino! Further investigation, and I found this print...

There's the unmistakable spots, and more importantly, it's annotated. Welbeck, at the top of the page, is the name of Cavendish's stud, but below the horse's hooves we see Paragon un Barbe. Paragon. We have a name!

Determined searching brought up a fair selection of illustrations from the Duke's books, and the fascinating realisation that the horses providing the examples aren't just a standard generic mount to demonstrate poses and movements, but the Duke's own precious herd, clearly his pride and joy! Here's a few of those which feature Paragon...

 

  

This snippet of information from Thoroughbred Bloodlines adds a bit more history to the horse's story :
"A royalist who left England following the defeat of the King's army at Marston Moor, Newcastle attained lasting fame during his tenure in Rotterdam where he established a riding school which cultivated the art of haute-école or high-school dressage riding and published his first work on horsemanship titled La Méthode et Invention Nouvelle de Dresser les Chevaux (1657-58). Whilst in Holland he also acquired eight barbary horses in which he was reputed to take great delight. All of them appear in one or more paintings by Abraham van Diepenbeke including the Turk named Machomilia and the brightly coloured Barb named Paragon."

The fact Paragon is illustrated with Welbeck Abbey in the background suggests that he came back to England with the Duke after the Restoration - he may have been used at the stud there, though I had a little rummage around the records and he doesn't seem to feature in any early Thoroughbred pedigrees like other arabian and barb stallions in the 17th century foundations of the breed. It seems his trail goes cold at this point, but I'm hugely satisfied to have gone from standing awed by a single painting, to knowing so much about him.

Of course, after all this investigation, I just had to make my own mini version of Paragon. 

I chose the G2 Morgan mould, for the pose (matching the second painting I saw), and the fitting proportions of small head, arched neck, deep chest, and strong quarters. I did some resculpting for the mane & tail, tweaked his profile, and made his feet bigger, and then set him aside because his colour was difficult; a pause in progress which lasted around four years!
A few weeks ago, I found him, and with painting going well lately, decided it was time to tackle that unforgettable sabino and spotted coat at last...

There he is! A fascinating paintjob to work on, trying to catch the ideal point between realism and matching the oil painted style of the artwork which first introduced me to this flashy little stallion. I've left him a little more brushstrokey, a little more 'painty' looking than I'd usually try on a sabino coat, with smudgey shading and a soft edge to his white markings.

He's got a great little face, wide forehead and expressive eyes, and I think this mould really works for that - there's much more pink eyewhite than I'd usually paint myself, but it's such a feature of his own portrait and general equine art in this era, I had to include it in his 3D portrait too!

The original mould has a longer tail to provide the third balancing point for it to stand, but Paragon's portrait shows his tail cut square and well above the ground whenever it's pictured loose, so he has a pin glued into the end of it to hold him upright.

I really am happy with him, how well he matches his portrait and that I finally managed to get him finished after being put on hold for so long, because painting motivation is a tricky thing and I'd been putting off the creation stage even though I really wanted him to exist!

Tales from the Body Box - seeing spots

Three little appaloosa patterned horses to introduce today, starting with one who was actually painted last year but I somehow forgot to ever get a picture of, so he's been delayed a bit!

He came about as a result of me thinking 'I have loads of this rearing mould, what could I do with it?', and also musing that I've hardly ever painted leopard appaloosas, most of mine have been blanket spotted, or roany semi-leopard. So it was a logical combination to put the appy paintjob on one of the rearing arabian bodies! He's buckskin, under his spotting pattern, so the spots on his body are a different colour to those on his legs.

Another colourful appaloosa, this time a flaxen chestnut with four long socks and a blaze, with my usual roany blanket type pattern. I'm getting much better at blonde manes and tails since I found the right creamy beige colour pre-mixed! 

I also found a really good method for getting the distinct sclera (eyewhites) that come with the appaloosa coat pattern : some very diluted pink paint touched against the eyeball while the horse is held on his side - the fluidity of the paint draws it right down into the crease between eye and lid all the way around, then once it's dried you can paint in the eye as usual.

And the final spotted horse is something of an oddity, being not quite an art portrait recreated with heavy resculpting of an existing mould (as I did for Whistlejacket and Cerbero), but inspired by an oil painting, anyway.

This is Landscape with Two Horses, by Nicolaes Berchem, dated to the second half of the 17th century. It's very often used as a perfect example of historic spotted Iberian horses, whether in the context of them existing in Europe (and oh, what a shame it is that they no longer do!) or as the source for the spotted genes which went to the Americas and carried on into new breeds developed there. Though there's several other good examples of spotted horses in artworks from that era, I've always had a fondness for the main horse in this painting, both for his lovely soft brown colour and detailed spots, and the way he turns just enough to look us in the eye, ears pricked and curious - he just leaps out at you as a real little character.
With no standing Iberian-type SM mould to work from, and being increasingly averse to major resculpting projects, I decided the only way I'd ever make a model version of him was to pick from what I'd got and go with it while I was in an enthusiastically painty mood, and so at last he's happened!

I'm extremely happy with how he turned out, roany smudgey mottled colours I find very stressful as there's so much opportunity to just make a blotchy mess when brush-painting by hand, it can go all wrong in one application of ever so slightly too much paint, or the wrong consistancy cos the air's drying it too much or you've tried to counteract that with a little too much licking of the brush...it's kind of scary, but super satisfying to relax when it's over. Maybe being glad it's over isn't really the same as enjoying painting and I'm in the wrong hobby, hahah.

Another angle, as well as attempting to get the spots in the same places I tried my hardest to get the shading just the same, with some more blended and some more speckled, and the deepest colour on the face, the front of the shoulders, and the legs.

I'm not entirely sure what to make of this colour, in technical specifics - my best guess is that his base colour is seal or sooty bay, or possibly a dark bay dun, with the leopard complex lightening and mottling it up, and also causing the pale mane and tail through roaning rather than any kind of additional silver gene on top. 

But the stand-out contradiction to this is that his spots are black, not bay/dun. Usually, an appaloosa's spots are whatever his solid base colour would've been. Sometimes they do look much darker, so you can see spots on the 'bay' front half of a bay blanket appaloosa, for example, but that's cos the appaloosa lightens the body colour with what can be subtle roaning of the coat even outside of the distinct white blanket area, and the true base colour is always what you're seeing in the spots. So really, this horse's spots should be painted in shades of brown, but to be true to the original oil painting, I stuck with black. 

This side is a mirror image of the other! Usually, if using a single photo reference for inspiration, I'd just make something up for the side I couldn't see, but this time it's complicated - I really wanted the clear side of his neck and shoulder to carry an exact copy of the pattern - his mane covers so much of this side I'd have lost the chance to recreate all that roaning and some of the spots, but of course the painting is of the left side, so if I invented some similar-but-different pattern, he wouldn't actually match the portrait when facing the same way. So he gets to be the only appaloosa in my herd who has the same spots on both sides!