Mystery Friday Foto #24; Peter Helck with Joe Tracy and Painting “Speed Demons of 1904- A Motor Race On The Continent in The Early Days”
Did you identify the gentleman and painting in this 1926 photo?
Identify the following:
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Name the gentleman on the left with Helck and a painting in 1926
The photo shows Helck and Joe Tracy in front of an important Helck painting in 1926.
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Identify the painting on the easel
“Speed Demons of 1904- A Motor Race On The Continent in The Early Days”.
What was special about this painting?
At the 2006 Gooding & Company Pebble Beach auction, this painting sold for over $100,000—a record for automotive art at auction.
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Kudos; identify as many cars as possible in the painting
A Mercedes, DeDietrich, Mors, Hotchkiss and Richard-Brasier race cars are seen racing through an imaginary medieval village.
Comments (2)
Congrats and kudos to Steve Lucas and Ariejan Bos for solving this weekend's Mystery Foto.
Greg O.
Comments
The gentleman sure looks like Joe Tracy so I’ll go with Joe as my guess. The title of the painting is “A Motor Race on the Continent in the Early Days” although I’ve also seen it referred to as “Speed Demons of 1904”. According to the 2006 Gooding & Company Pebble Beach catalog, “Along with the speeding cars, the artist has slipped in some sly humor as well. Can you spot the naked boy, the breast-feeding mother, the kid in underpants, and the lady with the uncovered backside?” I think that’s why the painting is special. The race cars are: Mercedes, DeDietrich, Mors, Hotchkiss, and Richard-Brasier. Also, along the right border is a Panhard-Levassor fixed-top touring car.
This painting is apparently a tribute to the European racing heroes of the early 20th century. At the top we see a list of the important racing drivers and their car makes:
Jenatzy on Mercedes won the 1903 Gordon Bennett Cup.
Lancia on Fiat won the 1904 Coppa Florio.
Gabriel on Mors won the 1903 Paris-Madrid race.
Wagner on Darracq won the 1906 Vanderbilt Cup.
Théry on Brasier won the 1904 and 1905 Gordon Bennett Cup.
Hémery on Darracq won the 1905 Vanderbilt Cup.
Duray on Lorraine-Dietrich won the 1906 Circuit des Ardennes.
Szisz on Renault won the 1906 Grand Prix de l’ACF.
Also on both sides and at the bottom text is written, but these are largely unreadable (probably showing more drivers with their car makes).
The whole scenery is partly fantasy, partly based on the 1907 Grand Prix de l’ACF, where these type of pedestrian bridges were used. Also on the lower left Durandal advertisements can be seen, which were placed along parts of the course in 1907. Durandal was a producer of anti-skid tire covers in these years.
However the cars are all older than 1907, and are not always ‘correct’ by number or appearance.
Jenatzy can be seen on the painting with the white 1903 Mercedes with no.4.
The car with no.5 must be a Turcat-Méry with its characteristic shark appearance, which competed in the 1904 Gordon Bennett Cup.
The red car with no.9 seems to be a 1904 Renault.
The car directly behind this with no.7 apparently is a 1904 Gobron-Brillié.
The blue car with no.12 is Duray’s 1906 Lorraine-Dietrich.
And then there is a white car in the distance, which could be a 1904 Hotchkiss.
Finally there are two normal cars on the right side of the painting, of which the blue one is a Panhard & Levassor.
The gentleman on the left of the photo with Peter Helck seems to be Joe Tracy.
‘Naked boy’, ‘Breast Feeding Mother’, ‘Kid in Underpants’, ‘Lady with uncovered backside’ circled in blue.