Egham Races: First thoughts

I don't have a clue where I'm going with this but I've started researching the horse racing which took place on the mead. I think I find the visual side of it very attractive; given its proximity to London and Windsor I'm hoping for a real mixture of pageantry and chaos and early indications are that that is exactly how it was.

I'm reading old newspaper clippings and have found hundreds of race reports, court reports and social vignettes. The racing was very different back then with each race of between 1 and 4 miles long being run up to 4 times to find an aggregate winner, but otherwise it seems very close to a version of today's Derby in that it was attended by every social class from monarch to mongrel, it was effectively a fairground with betting on anything and everything including fighting (the reports read as though professional fighters from London and rowdy locals were all but queuing up to face off) and was also a centre of informal trading and scams galore (hence the court reports) before closing down for good due to pickpocketing.

My favourite thing so far took place at the meeting on Tuesday September 2, 1806. As the horses were often racing up to 16 miles, jockeys were instructed not to take the lead but to follow others and overtake at the last minute to keep the horses fresher. In the Gold Cup race every jockey received this instruction and, in front of Queen Charlotte (George III's queen), the royal princesses and the Dukes of York and Cumberland, the entire field tried to stay at the back and walked for a whole mile before one horse eventually started racing. In the end it was a good race as the first 4 horses were abreast with just a few yards to go, but early on there must have been a certain amount of embarrassment amongst the owners and unrest amongst the crowd.

The big question of course is whether or not I want to turn this into art and, if so, how. Landscape I can handle, figures too, chaos is absolutely my element but horses? and dealing with that level of complexity? I'd need a totally different language to the one I'm using now although the method of painting could stay the same. One to tuck away and let ferment for a year or two I think, unless I stumble across some really compelling imagery I can appropriate. In the meantime, I'll keep digging.