The London Amateur Boxing Championship held at the Royal Albert Hall
| The London Amateur Boxing Championship held at the Royal Albert Hall |
|---|
| Alfred Thomson , 1948 |
| Oil on canvas |
| 116.8 x 88.9 cm |
| Private collection
Link to the picture |
The London Amateur Boxing Championship held at the Royal Albert Hall , or London Amateur Championships for short , is a painting by the British painter Alfred Thomson from 1948. The 116.8 cm × 88.9 cm oil on canvas shows a boxing match at London's Royal Albert Hall . Thomson received the gold medal for this work at the 1948 Summer Olympics as part of the art competition . The picture is in a private collection.
Image description
The painting shows a boxing match. The square boxing ring can be seen from a medium distance, with the viewer being approximately at eye level with the boxers. The two boxers in the ring are shown during the fight. The front boxer with the white trousers has his back turned towards the viewer. He has stretched out his left arm, but falls back with his bare torso into the ropes of the boxing ring behind him. Only his right foot touches the ground, while the left foot hovers in the air, which underlines a movement. The second boxer has bent his arms. This posture may serve as cover, but it can also be part of a counterattack. This boxer also has at least one foot in the air. His body posture means that a typical dancing movement for boxers is conceivable. Both boxers, like large parts of the picture, are not worked out down to the smallest detail. The boxing shoes and gloves can be seen, muscles, especially in the back and upper arm area, and the protruding ears of the front boxer are clearly visible, but the lack of facial features of the second boxer is noticeable. Instead of eyes, nose and mouth, only a brownish surface is painted here. Both boxers remain anonymous. They have no faces and there is no evidence of their identity. The picture therefore does not show a specific boxing match, but rather deals with boxing in general.
The portrait format of the painting is striking, with the theme of which a landscape format would have been conceivable. The boxing match takes place in the lower half of the picture. In front of the boxing ring, some of the spectators can be seen more clearly. A photographer with a flashlight is placed in the front left corner who tries to photograph the boxing match from a crouching perspective. In front of him, with his back to the viewer, a member of the army can be made out with his unit's badges or something similar on his uniform sleeves. To the right of this is a group of three men seated on chairs. Particularly noticeable is the man sitting on the left in this group, who has turned his back to the boxing ring and looks over his shoulder with wide eyes at the boxing going on. His corpulent body with his belly stuck out is in a black suit with a white vest. He is strikingly decorated and wears a bow around his neck, a white pocket square in his jacket and a flower in the buttonhole of his lapel. His hand is supported on a stick, his head with the bowler tucked back and a tobacco pipe is in his mouth. He is the counterpart to the athletic athletes in the ring. Other people at the bottom of the picture also have details. In the group of three there is a white-haired man who smokes a cigar and looks at the man next to him instead of watching the boxing match. The man next to you is holding a rolled paper - possibly a newspaper. A man has stretched himself particularly casually in the lower right corner. More lying than sitting, he has crossed his right leg over the left, pulled his hat down over his face and has a cigarette in his mouth. The other spectators, who can be seen out of focus, seem to be following the actions in the boxing ring more concentrated.
In the upper half of the picture, the location of the event becomes clear. As the title suggests, the boxing match takes place in the Royal Albert Hall. The theater boxes with their open red curtains spread over several floors are clearly recognizable. While these boxes have their own lighting via small lamps, the boxing ring in the large hall is illuminated in a conical shape by 20 spotlights hanging from the ceiling. These spotlights are arranged in a group at the top of the picture and take up almost the same area as the boxing ring below them. This overemphasis on the light source and the glow of light that occupies large parts of the picture gives the scenery an exaggeration, if not a religious impression. The picture is signed Thomson lower left .
background
Representations with boxing men have been known since ancient times. For example, there are portraits of pugilists on Greek vases or mosaics. In England boxing experienced a revival since the end of the 17th century, and since the 19th century people have fought according to rules that have essentially existed to the present day. The Amateur Boxing Association of England has existed since 1880. This association of amateur boxers is the organizer of the boxing match shown in the picture. The Royal Albert Hall with its antiquity-oriented rotunda has a long tradition of boxing events. In 1918 amateur boxers from the British and American armies fought against each other here. Already at that time there were amateur boxers as well as professional boxers who made their living from sport. In 1948, however, the Olympic regulations only provided for the amateur status of athletes. Professional athletes were excluded from participation. Alfred Thomson therefore deliberately chose an amateur boxing event for his painting and explicitly emphasized this in his picture title.
A direct model for Thomson's painting is not known. He may have attended a boxing match himself and watched the athletes fight. It is also likely that he knew photos of boxing matches. The photographer in the painting could be interpreted as a reference to such templates. But even in painting there were artists before Thomson who took up the subject of boxing. For example, the American Thomas Eakins painted the picture Between Rounds in 1898-99 , in which he represented a break from fighting. For him it's about the tense calm between two boxing rounds. Only one boxer can be seen surrounded by his supervisors. The parallels to Thomson's picture can mainly be seen in the background. Eakins' boxing ring is also in a theater building. The audience sits on a balcony or in the tier and looks down at the boxing ring from above. Another well-known artist who took up boxing was George Bellows . Several pictures of boxing matches are known of him. In his 1924 painting Dempsey and Firpo , he shows a famous boxing match that took place in 1923 between Jack Dempsey and Luis Firpo in New York . Bellows used a landscape format for his picture and shows the dramatic climax of the first round when Firpo, who was considered inferior, knocked the favored Dempsey out of the ring. The arrangement of the boxers is similar to Thomson's picture. Bellows, too, has focused its point of view exactly on the side of the boxing ring on which the boxing action takes place. Like Thomson, he shows the boxers in action on the ropes and has painted a number of spectators in front of the ring. All in all, he is closer to the event in his picture than Thomson, and the chosen view from below underscores Firpo's superiority in the situation shown.
Thomas Eakins:
Between Rounds
1898-99
George Bellows:
Dempsey and Firpo
1924
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In contrast to Bellows, the representation of a well-known fight was out of the question for Thomson. His painting The London Amateur Boxing Championship held at the Royal Albert Hall was painted specifically for the art competition at the 1948 Summer Olympics in London. Both boxers painted by Bellows were professional boxers, Thomson deliberately portrayed an amateur boxing match that complied with the regulations of the Olympic Games. Due to the anonymity of his athletes, there was also no risk of portraying boxers who later switched to professional sport. His picture, however, offered good conditions for a good placement in the art competitions. Boxing was a well-known sport in antiquity and the modern Olympic Games also referred to antiquity. In boxing, due to the risk of injury, compliance with the rules is particularly important and fair play is observed in this sport in particular . Thomson received the gold medal in the painting category for his picture in the London Amateur Championships in the 1948 London Olympics art competition .
The painting was in the collection of Peter Langan for several years , who ran a restaurant in London together with actor Michael Caine , which frequented many personalities from the show business. The restaurant was adorned with numerous works of art, including paintings by David Hockney , RB Kitaj, and other major contemporary artists. Even The London Amateur Boxing Championship held at the Royal Albert Hall was part of this designed with art wall decoration. On December 18, 2012, the picture was sold at Christie's auction house in London at an estimate of £ 5,000–8,000 for £ 73,250. This is the highest price ever paid for an artwork by Alfred Thomson. The buyer of the picture remained anonymous.
literature
- Richard Stanton: The Forgotten Olympic Art Competitions . Trafford, Victoria 2000, ISBN 1-552-12606-4 .
- Wolfgang Behringer: The cultural history of sport, from the ancient Olympics to the present . Federal Agency for Political Education, Bonn 2012, ISBN 978-3-8389-0277-7 .
