Charley's Heroes and Champions
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Charley’s heroes and champions JESSICA OWERS is entranced by a racing man’s presentation of great art associated with the turf. H. PALMER: The jaunty painting of the Australian Champion Sweepstakes, housed at the National Library of Australia. ime waits for no decorating the best racing Charley’s home at Port Stainforth is there, Frederick man, but it seems to writing in the country. But he Macquarie is on copper Woodhouse and Stuart Reid, wait for Bob Charley. hasn’t quit his day jobs. Charley country, acreage that his and contemporaries Alister At 76 years old he is a property developer, timber grandfather assumed in 1906. Simpson and Michael Jeffery. Tis like a fallen power line, all miller, restaurant owner and He is proud of this, because The earliest Hyde Park and crackling, ageless energy. wine grower, and his mining history is the cog that moves Flemington courses are there, In Australian racing, pedigree is spectacular. him. And when it comes to as are countless portraits of the Charley’s knowledge is vast and “My grandfather was the man horse racing, what Charley greatest equine champions. In his contribution great; so great, who discovered silver at Broken doesn’t know about history total, Charley has included 140 in fact, that he was inducted an paintings, sourced from racing Officer in the Order of Australia clubs and private collections. nearly 15 years ago. He was The golden age of painting racehorses “It goes like this,” he says, a chairman of the Australian in Australia was really the latter part recounting with bouncy Jockey Club (AJC), of Racing of the 19th century. clarity the origins of Heroes & NSW and the Australian Racing Champions. “I started working Board. He worked in print, radio BOB CHARLEY on it around 2007. I’d seen a and television, trained a horse or marvellous book in England two, gambled, and swung with Hill,” he says. “At the age of 18 can be carved on the head of written by David Oldrey, which the baggers for a time. he was a jackaroo, and at 19 he a needle. It’s why he was so depicts the great paintings These days, he chairs was a millionaire. He owned qualified to fill the magnificent, owned by the Jockey Club, and/ the selection panel for the the Great Fitzroy mine, out sateen pages of Heroes & or the great trophies, furniture, Australian Racing Hall Of of Rockhampton, and what’s Champions, his latest book. and so on. I wasn’t going to Fame and is a trustee of Royal significant about that is his Published in late 2014, the go into that much detail, but I Randwick. He also directs (and partner was Herbert Hoover, book is a record of Australian thought it was an inspiration.” sponsors) the Bill Whittaker who became the 31st president racing through the art of a Oldrey’s book is The Jockey Award, every second year of the United States.” great many painters. Martin Club Rooms: A Catalogue and 30 INSIDE RACING BOOK REVIEW History of the Collection, and it was just the push that Charley needed. In truth, he had wandered the corridors of the AJC for years, gazing at paintings that screamed as much about Australian racing as any photograph, wondering what he could do with them. “I’d always been in love with Martin Stainforth as an artist,” Charley says of the British born artist (1866-1957) best known for his paintings of horses in England, Australia and the United States. “I think he is certainly in the top four or five equine artists of all time. I wondered how I might be able to do them [his paintings] justice.” For the first five years of the Heroes & Champions venture Charley did little more than look around Australia for art. There was plenty among the racing clubs, but he wanted others: the MARTIN STAINFORTH: ‘The Grey Leads’, famous for depicting the complete jumping action of a racehorse. ones rarely seen, or never publicly seen. He posted advertisements organised racing since 1810. concentrated, or concentrate, paintings peeled back some in major newspapers and got a The challenge was to cull the on horse racing.” sociological history too. few responses that amounted to count to 140. Heroes & Champions is “The golden age of painting little, while in the background, Charley says that in terms a time machine. Each page is racehorses in Australia the ‘bush telegraph’ did its thing. of volume of output, there have presented with an abundance was really the latter part of Friends of friends came forward, been five major racing artists of white space, simple, the 19th century,” he says. as did dynasty collectors like the in this country—Stainforth, succinctly written essays, “Photography hadn’t come in Tait, Waterhouse and Dufficy Woodhouse, Joseph Fowles, and then the explosive colour yet, and everybody had their families. Simpson and Jeffery—and the and beauty of each painting. horses painted. The really dry “I kept an Excel file of work of each is heavily featured Some are moody, like the period was between 1929 and every painting I found, in the book. However, there 1845 depiction of Flemington 1967, because there was the alphabetically,” Charley says. were certain iconic portraits Racecourse. Some are Depression and then the Second “I noted the horse, the year, that were included delightful, like the Australian World War. They just weren’t who the artist was, and where on reputation alone. Champion Sweepstakes of 1859. painting horses then.” the painting was. When I got to “Look at the marvellous Others, even the modern ones, He rues this fact. There were six or seven hundred, I began to painting of Phar Lap by Stuart are hypnotic, like the portrait a great many champions in this sort them according to what Reid,” he says. “Reid didn’t of Sunline by artist Ewa, of era for which great portraits I thought I should use, and have an output like these other whom nothing is known. With do not exist. what I thought should be artists. He painted things other its autumnal hues and respect “Todman is a classic case,” discarded.” than just racehorses, whereas of light and shade, it is hard he says. “The only painting At about 700 paintings, I think Stainforth, Woodhouse, to believe this one is so recent. of this horse is the one done he had a staggering record of Simpson and Jeffery virtually Charley’s long search for many years after he raced, EWA: The Sunline portrait by artist Ewa, of whom nothing is known, housed at the JOSEPH FOWLES: The magnificent portrait of Archer. Victoria Racing Club. www.insideracingmagazine.com.au 31 BOOK REVIEW paintings. Likewise, he had to include some inferior ones. He employed three photographers to photograph for him, and relied on many private collectors to travel their pieces, which they did. Only Charley, with his nimble, second-to-none reputation, could have expected such commitment. Sales of the book have been THAT RACE: Bonecrusher strong. With only 1000 copies (Gary Stewart), outside, beats Our Waverley Star (Lance O’Sullivan). printed, and no chance of a second run, Charley has only a few hundred left. Hawkesbury Race Club purchased a copy Vale the immortal for each winning owner for its Guineas meeting, and the Bonecrusher interest from country clubs BOB CHARLEY: brings his books up has been immense, something and down Australia, piled high in the BY STEPHEN HOWELL boot of his car. that can’t be said, he admits, of the city clubs. But he isn’t ew Zealand’s other Big “voice now hoarse, he came when a book was put together concerned about that. He NRed, Bonecrusher, was up with poetry”. in New Zealand and they brings his books up and put down aged 32 on June Carlyon also wrote that commissioned paintings of down Australia, piled high 10 after vets could do no more Bonecrusher, after the win horses from the past.” in the boot of his car. to ease his pain from the hoof was “legless but still standing”. Heroes & Champions covers The man they call ‘Banjo disease laminitis. Our Waverley Star, who the racing era 1810 to 2000, Bob’—he is renowned for his There is only one Big Red won 13 of 34 races, was put simply because, as Charley puts recitations of the works of Banjo in Australian racing, Phar Lap, down after a breaking a leg it, he had to stop somewhere. Paterson—has already moved the legend Kiwis claim in a paddock accident in He strove to represent equally on to his next publishing as their own, but the adoration March 1991. each great era in Australian project, a series of three books for Bonecrusher’s class and Bonecrusher was farewelled racing, and admits he had that will document elements of courage is such that at times this June in his Auckland to leave out some incredible Australia’s rarest racing past. in New Zealand he is referred paddock by those who looked to with the reverence usually after him when he raced and reserved for Phar Lap. since his retirement in 1990— That doesn’t mean the trainer Frank Ritchie, his wife ’Crusher wasn’t adored in Colleen and their son Shaune Australia, where his legend (now a trainer, then the horse’s was made when he beat Our strapper) and owners Peter and Waverley Star in the 1986 Shirley Mitchell. Cox Plate (2040m) at Moonee Valley, the final 700 metres BONECRUSHER a duel that left the rest of the field behind, brought the crowd to its feet and gave Ch g 1982, the spectacle the “race of Pag Asa-Imitation (NZ), the century” tag.