Description:

Townsend, Lee (American, 1895–1965)
Collection of 4
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Get Away Day, Ink Wash, 12" x 15", Framed: 21.5" x 23.5" Initialed Exhibited: The Art of Lee Townsend, National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame, Saratoga Springs, NY. July 10-Sept. 6, 1999. County Fair Race Tracks, Montross Gallery, NY: April 1-13, 1935. Cleaning the Boots, Oil on Canvas, 25" x 30", Framed: 33" x 37.5" Signed Exhibited: The Art of Lee Townsend, National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame, Saratoga Springs, NY. July 10-Sept. 6, 1999. Illustrated on page 24 of the catalogue. The Wash Bucket, Pastel, 18" x 13", Framed: 25.5" x 20" Provenance: Beresford Gallery Blue Jockey Study, Pastel, 14" x 17", Framed: 22" x 25.5" Initialed Provenance: Beresford Gallery Horse racing is often referred to as the Sport of Kings, and at the highest level of the sport the moniker is apropos, but that which happens before and after the post parade and winner’s circle photographs is the lifeblood of the sport. The unassuming men and women who pour their heart into taking care of the horses… Lee Townsend’s career represents an era in American art where the faithful depiction of one’s surroundings was something to be celebrated and revered. His canvases are an unadulterated, honest, and behind-the-scenes snapshots of racetrack life. IN APPRECIATION OF LEE TOWNSEND Lee Townsend is first and foremost an American painter he is not just a “horse artist” as he has so often been dubbed. It is true that the world of the horse was his “scene,” but as an artist he transcends the limitations of a particular “scene” just as Edward Hopper did with his “scene” or Wyeth with his. Lee Townsend had something to say about a phase of American life just as much as did John Stuart Curry or George Bellows, and what he had to say was also unique. Lee Townsend is the only one who saw and understood and interpreted with compassion, joy, and humor the life around the racetracks— from the county fairgrounds in Illinois and Iowa to Saratoga, Belmont, and the Big A. Of course, Townsend was interested in horses. But what amazes anyone who studies all of the artist’s work is how few paintings and drawings there are of horses by themselves, just horses. Townsend’s basic subject is the people who live around horses and for horses and by horses. These consumed his interest: the faceless jockeys around the bush tracks, the shrewd bookmakers, the greedy two-dollar bettors, the grooms, the trainers. He loved the color of the life—the little jockeys in their bright silks, the parade before the race, the big tracks with their flowers, trees, and flags waving, exciting in the sunlight. He saw the beauty in the tack the horsemen cherished—the textures of a red satin cap, shiny little leather boots and saddles, stirrups and whips, fresh white leg bandages, rub cloths, buckets and blankets. Down through the years, he portrayed faithfully and with love both the reality and the romance of life around the horses in all of its grimness and greed, its gaiety and glamor, and even at times, its nobility. Perhaps most but not all of the nobility is to be found in Townsend’s horses themselves—these beautiful animals used by men for so many varied purposes: to earn a living, to gain fame, to cherish and care for as one would a child, to “improve the breed,” and to win and lose money. There is no end to what Lee Townsend’s pictures can tell us about ways of life if we have eyes to see and a heart to understand. For a man who was as articulate as Lee Townsend—he could and did hold the attention of a roomful of people for hours with his stories—he was uncommunicative about his art. He talked about projected pictures—ideas, visions. He discussed various mediums and would copy and mix formulas from former painters’ notebooks. He worried about colors, particularly, for example, how to get sunlight into a Townsend sky which, no matter how hard he tried, always ended by being overcast. He worked and puttered over frames, but there was one thing he seldom did—he did not discuss art with an esoteric capital A. He was a doer, not a theorist. He loved people and animals, not ideas; he was so irrevocably an individual—Lee Townsend (without even being aware of this)—that there was absolutely no distinction between the man and the artist: they were one and the same at all times, in all places. In the truest sense, Lee Townsend embraced all of the essential goodness in life—the parts of life that he knew, understood, and loved were simple, unsophisticated, sincere like himself. His paintings are simple, unsophisticated, sincere, and, above all, honest like himself. They had to be; they were Lee Townsend. That is why Lee Townsend seldom did “horse portraits.” He would have had to make the animals look the way the owner wanted to see them, or make them look like a Munnings, a Stubbs, or a Marshall. Lee Townsend did not know how to compromise; his horses, his people, his barns, his tracks, his jockeys were Townsend horses, people, barns, tracks, and jockeys. Money, recognition, acclaim, these might come after the fact of the completed painting; they were not considered before nor were they ever the chief reasons for his paintings. Lee Townsend always went along in his own quiet way doing his own work. When he changed his style and palette, he did so because he was seeing brighter colors and greater depths. When he broadened his subjects from harness to flat racing, or from county fairs to the big tracks, he did so because the course of his life had taken him from one to the other. When Andy Warhol became successful with his soup cans, it would never have occurred to Lee Townsend to start painting oversized bottles of horse liniment, yet we all know artists who in one way or another did just this. It is a truism that time takes care of both the bandwagoners and those who doggedly go along at their own pace saying what they have to say in their own way. If what these artists have to say is original and if it has substance, they will eventually receive widespread recognition and find their place in the great mainstream of American painting. — HELEN WILLIAMS TOWNSEND

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November 13, 2025 4:00 PM EST
Lexington, KY, US

Cross Gate Gallery

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