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The Horse at Harewood art exhibition

‘The Horse at Harewood’ exhibition has been quite a journey of discovery for the curatorial team – although there have always been horses here, and we’re all aware of their role in the history of the Estate and the Lascelles family – we’ve never before placed such a focus on this area of Harewood’s history and the artworks arising from it. The works now on show in the Terrace Gallery were collected from all over the House, some had literally barely seen the light of day for decades, and most have never been seen publicly before. This posed quite a few challenges: some of the works needed conservation and most needed cleaning to remove varnish which has yellowed over the years. Most of all we needed to reconstruct the story of how and why these pictures, and the artists who painted them, came to be at Harewood. We know that the 6th Earl and HRH Princess Mary kept racehorses and even established a stud farm at Harewood, and of course we have photographs of some of their horses too. But there’s a lot of work to do to identify individual horses, reconstruct their racing successes, and piece together the commissioning of the horse portraits now in the Collection. This exhibition is really the start of something, an investigation into part of Harewood’s history, and it’s a rich and exciting area to be working in. We hope to revisit this theme with another exhibition in a few years’ time once we’ve pieced that story together, and had the necessary conservation work carried out, and we also intend to publish a book on the subject too.

Flamingo Watch update

The flamingos have now laid nine eggs. Four of which are unfortunately not going to hatch. The remaining five are all ok. The big excitement of today is that this is day 28 of the incubation period. Flamingo eggs normally incubate in 27 – 32 days, so we are expecting the first egg to hatch today or in the next couple of days.

The media have been out for a news item with BBC Look North airing on their 1330hrs news and also this evening at 1830. The Yorkshire Evening Post will also be featuring it tonight or tomorrow.

Did you know that you can Adopt a Bird at Harewood? If you would like to adopt a baby flamingo please call 0113 218 1000. All proceeds from adoption go towards our conservation and research activity. Adopting a Bird doesn’t mean that you can take the bird home, but we’ll acknowledge your adoption with a welcome pack, a plaque on the enclosure and send you a twice yearly ‘Stock Press’ Newsletter, as well as invite you to a summer evenings bird adoption evening.

The Flamingos are laying eggs

After nearly twenty years of nothing, our Chilean Flamingos have started laying eggs, there are currently six eggs being sat on by the Flamingos. The first eggs are due to hatch in about a week.

One of the theories as to why the Flamingos haven’t laid eggs before is that there haven’t been enough of them to feel comfortable. To rectify this we have introduced life size cardboard cut outs of the birds and a sprinkler system to keep the island that they are laying their eggs on damp. Having damp soil enables them to build their nests as you can see in the picture.