Customer Reviews

Belmont Park: A Century of Champions

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This is a very good value for the (Amazon.com) price. It is a quality production, but it is flawed slightly. Richard Stone Reeves is one of the Greats in the history of Thoroughbred portraiture, without question. However, his recent works are sketchy, lacking in detail, and seem unfinished. Several of the plates betray the fact that that Reeves is either no longer concerned with perfection, or is having difficulty putting paint onto canvas or board now. His earlier works as included in this volume are very good, but the later ones (done during the past five years or so) are more "impressionistic" and sketchy. Boren has written descriptions of the careers of the horses portrayed, and there's nothing new there, just brief summaries familiar to most racing fans. Reeves describes the horses briefly, but his comments are limited mainly to the temperment of the "sitter" ("stander"?) and the races he viewed. These quibbles aside, the book IS very nice. By all means, purchase a copy...it's a great addition to any equine library.

Edward L. Bowen, Belmont Park: A Century of Champions (Eclipse Press, 2005)

Richard Stone Reeves is likely to go down in history as the twentieth century's finest chronicler of the Thoroughbred racehorse. Here, Eclipse Press offers us a wide selection of Reeves' paintings, with text by both Reeves and Edward L. Bowen. The portraits themselves, of course, are above reproach; each one is a stunning portrayal of its subject. Where the book too often fails is in the writing.

The main problem with the text is that Reeves himself, while a fine painter, is not all that good a writer. Bowen is, most of the time, but Reeves' comments are often redundant in the face of Bowen's writing, and the end result is a wish that they had been excluded, or at least heavily edited, in order to give more room to Bowen's descriptions of the horses, which are usually abbreviated, the text versions of highlight reels.

The pictures are good, but if you're looking for depth, you might want to head somewhere else. ***