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The Guardian
19 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Back to the land: revisiting the streets of Aix-en-Provence, the birthplace of Paul Cezanne
When I was 12 years old, my parents moved my sister and me to Aix-en-Provence, the birthplace of and inspiration to Paul Cezanne. In truth, Cezanne had nothing to do with their choice of destination. But his mountain was the one thing my father knew of the region. He was three years into a four-year fine art degree (he painted portraits of the two of us daughters for his finals), steeped in painting and its history. When we landed at Marignane airport in nearby Marseille on 29 August 1989, a wildfire was ravaging the Sainte-Victoire, that celebrated mountain subject of so many of Cezanne's works. In the tumult of the days that followed – our family unhoused, the mountain unrecognisable – my father hustled between estate agents with the sound of sirens ringing in his ears. 'Cezanne must be turning in his grave,' he remembers one saying. In the 119 years since he died, Cezanne (no acute accent; it's how he spelled it himself) has been crowned the father of modern art. It's the lineage a host of disparate painters claimed in his wake. For Matisse he was 'the father of us all' and for Picasso, 'the mother who protects her children'. Futurists, cubists and fauvists felt the same. The symbolists said his was 'pure painting'. And Gauguin, well: he bought six Cezannes when he was flush and only parted with them under duress when he wasn't, having said, of the fabled Still Life with Fruit Dish from 1879-80, that he'd sooner sell everything he owned than lose it. Aix, by contrast, has mostly been famous for hardly owning any Cezannes at all: first because it didn't care to and then, when it was too late, because it couldn't afford to. This summer the town celebrates Cezanne 2025, a season dedicated to rewriting that story. The town set aside a budget of €26m for the full programme. This has included restoring and opening to the public the Bastide du Jas de Bouffan (the family's country home of 40 years); the Lauves studio to the north; and the Bibémus quarries in the foothills of the Sainte-Victoire where Cezanne often worked. Also included is a major exhibition at the Musée Granet, which opens on 28 June, and reassembles for the first time works now housed in museums all over the world that Cezanne made in Aix; along with three other exhibitions in the town and a programme of live events. It is a family reunion. I have come back home to retrace Cezanne's footsteps, literally, in a kind of reductionary process I liken to the expert restorers' painstaking scraping off of decades of paint and paper on the walls of the old bastide. Growing up in Aix, 'Cezanne' was a local lycée, 'Bibémus' the rocks on which I learned to boulder, and the 'Jas', the neighbourhood in which I learned to drive. Returning to Aix, I want to walk where he walked to scrape these words back to their earlier meanings – to let these familiar landscapes be his once again. Cezanne was born in 1839 in the old town centre. He lived in various homes in these narrow streets and, at 13, befriended the author Émile Zola on the school benches of the Collège Bourbon, now the Collège Mignet. His hatmaker father, Louis-Auguste, made so much money selling rabbit-skin wares (the big Aixois industry of his day) that he invested in a bank, in the process becoming even richer. When Cezanne was 20, his father purchased the bastide as a country retreat. From then on, and until his mother's death in 1899, it would be what the president of the Société Paul Cezanne and co-curator of the exhibition, Denis Coutagne, calls 'the centre of gravity' of Cezanne's world. It is where he painted his first big works as a twentysomething, directly on to the decorative walls of the ground-floor Grand Salon. Recent restorations have revealed further Cezannes no one knew about – a scene of a port entrance he then partly painted over with a scene of a game of hide and seek. When the latter was removed to canvas by the home's new owner, along with the Four Seasons and other famous panels, and sold on to museums, these fragments were simply papered over and forgotten about. In 1880, Louis-Auguste, who definitely viewed the property as something to boast about, nonetheless built Cezanne a studio: an enviably large room on the top floor, with a remarkably modern double-height window that bluntly interrupts the symmetry of the mansion's facade. As Laforest puts it, that in itself puts paid to the myth that the father did not support the son's endeavours. I stand at the window. But for the military row of cypress trees forming an extra barrier inside the property wall to the right, I know the mountain is right there. On clear days, from the Jas, it appears as a perfect Matisse-like cutout in pale blue against a paler sky. Musée Granet director Bruno Ely, the other co-curator of the exhibition, tells me that the 1989 fire brought the Sainte-Victoire back to something closer to what Cezanne knew: the pine forest that was burning when I arrived is a 20th-century phenomenon. In the 19th century, all these hills were kept closely cropped by flocks of sheep. From the bastide to the Bibémus quarries takes about an hour and a half on foot. Cezanne would hitch a ride with a driver and a cart to get a bit closer, but once in what are now Aix's north-eastern heights, he'd still have to walk an hour to reach the quarry. As I'm walking – from the bastide to the quarry to the dam Zola's father built and down into Le Tholonet, where Cezanne lived later on; then back into town along the petite Route du Tholonet, which culture minister André Malraux had listed and renamed as the Route Cezanne in 1959 – I watch the mountain, this constant presence. You might say that the Mont Sainte-Victoire, as he called it, was to Cezanne what Rouen Cathedral was to Monet. However, his approach was completely at odds with the impressionists'. Monet recorded the changing light: it's right there in the titles ('grey skies', 'sunshine', 'at sunset'). By contrast, Cezanne's concerns, as Coutagne puts it, are 'never documentary', 'never meteorological', never about 'the instant'. In 1876, Cezanne writes to a friend about olive trees having a greyish colour that is 'permanent'. Matisse, Cezanne's junior by 30 years, understood this. He wrote to a friend in 1918 that 'the olive trees are so beautiful at this hour: the full light of day is magnificent, but frightening. I find that Cezanne conveyed it well, happily not in its brilliance, which is unbearable.' Light, sure, but not changing light; essential light. Sign up to Inside Saturday The only way to get a look behind the scenes of the Saturday magazine. Sign up to get the inside story from our top writers as well as all the must-read articles and columns, delivered to your inbox every weekend. after newsletter promotion Art historians have long landed on the notion of 'thingness', to describe what Cezanne sought: not the way a thing looked, but what it was. His allegiance to the supremely local isn't about identifying with the place, but rather that every rock or tree or house he painted is one he saw. That specificity is what makes his work so profoundly, universally resonant. What makes Cezanne's paintings so radical is how he arrived, as Coutagne puts it, 'like a meteor … Nothing, no one prefigures him.' His oeuvre resolutely denies the illusion of all the figurative painting that came before him. It forces the viewer to reckon with his painted surface, to not be duped into thinking that said painting is a window on to the world. Cezanne's Lauves studio, which he built in 1901, is a building site when I visit, inaccessible until later in the summer. Fresh apples have usually been displayed here, much like the fresh lemon left on a pewter plate in the Kettle's Yard gallery in Cambridge, displayed to echo the yellow dot in Joan Miró's Tic Tic, which hangs on the adjacent wall. But perhaps this is why I've never been much inclined to go inside the Lauves studio: with Cezanne, I want to see his apples – that painted appleness – not fresh fruit. Virginia Woolf once wrote about her sister, Vanessa Bell, persuading John Maynard Keynes to lend them a tiny Cezanne he'd just bought – a 1878 still life of seven apples titled Pommes – because their friend Roger Fry wanted to copy it. 'Nessa left the room and reappeared with a small parcel about the size of a large slab of chocolate. On one side are six [sic] apples by Cezanne. Roger very nearly lost his senses. I've never seen such a sight of intoxication. He was like a bee on a sunflower. Imagine … us all gloating upon these apples. They really are very superb.' I finish with a visit to Cezanne's grave in the Saint-Pierre Cemetery. I add a pebble to a few already perched on its aged surface and think about Patti Smith. Her A Book of Days is filled with Polaroids of the headstones of authors she's visited: Rimbaud, Camus, Woolf, Jean Genet. While you can buy a novel for a tenner or read it for free at a library, visiting a writer's grave offers something else, something closer to the unique experience of holding a handwritten manuscript or seeing where the writer sat to write it. A painter's grave though? Standing here, I am both moved and left wanting. It's his actual paintings I want to see. And to see Cezanne originals, you normally have to go on a grand tour, a modern-day pilgrimage, to the big museums of the world. This July, they are, remarkably, all coming to Aix. So I'm heading home again this summer to see those, too. Cezanne at Jas De Bouffan is at Musée Granet, Aix-en-Provence, France, from 28 June to 12 October.
Telegraph
2 days ago
- Telegraph
France's most perfect city just got even better
It's early on Tuesday morning and the Place des Comtales in Aix-en-Provence has been humming since 6am, when the first traders began to arrive. Dozens of stalls, loaded with a dazzling cornucopia, are crammed into the long sprawling square. Colours shimmer in the hot morning sun – the peaches and nectarines, cherries and apricots glow red and orange. Dull khaki artichokes mingle with the more brilliant greens of the huge frissé lettuces. There are bright yellow peppers and courgette flowers, and deep purple aubergines. Then there are the bread stalls, the cheesemakers, the charcuterie specialists and the fishmongers, and the lady who is keen to get you to taste samples from her vats of olive tapenades. Shopping here is an exercise in the unalloyed pleasures of temptation. Even if you aren't buying lunch or supper, it's almost impossible to resist a pristine white goats' cheese, a jar of lavender honey, a bag of Provençal herbs, or a bottle of olive oil from the slopes of the Alpilles. But the Place des Comtales pales into significance when you wander through the narrow pedestrianised streets to the spectacular flower market in the town hall square. Here, the subtle aromas of dried herbes de Provence are replaced by the heady scents of roses, lilies, carnations and chrysanthemums, which spill out of their buckets under the multi-coloured canopies. As always in Aix, I am getting distracted. It would be easy to browse the markets of this most perfect of cities all day. Not only is there flowers and fresh edible produce here, but also local pottery and Savon de Marseille soaps. The endless bric-a-brac of the flea market lines the grand avenue of the Cours Mirabeau. Beyond the tourist drag of the Rue Espariat, I wander at will among the ancient squares – each of which has a sparkling fountain – through side streets lined with pastel-painted houses and flamboyant hotels built from the local ochre-coloured stone by wealthy merchants during the city's economic heyday in the 17th century. I try too never to miss the chance of a visit to the cathedral, a site so ancient that 2,000-year-old granite columns from Aix's Roman era are built into the structure, like an archaeological palimpsest. The first church here was built around 500AD on the former forum, and if you book a guided tour (on the half hour), you will also see the small miracle of the 12th-century cloister, which was also a city square in Roman times. The carved capitals of the stone arcade – depicting Biblical stories and symbols – are some of the greatest treasures of European Romanesque art, while the central garden is planted with an idyllic Mediterranean garden, including an olive tree and rose bushes. A few minutes' walk back through the town, in the much quieter streets south of the Cour Mirabeau, is another green retreat – a more formal topiary garden in the grounds of the Hôtel de Caumont. Now a museum, the hotel was once a fabulous 18th-century town house built for the Marquess of Cabannes. It is a reminder of why I have come back to Aix on this sunny June day. A few steps down the street, housed in a former 17th-century convent, is the lycée where two of the city's most famous sons – the writer Emile Zola and painter Paul Cézanne – studied together and became long-time friends. And this year it is the turn of Cézanne to be thrust back into the limelight. One of the most influential artists in the development of modern art, Cézanne was born in Aix in 1839 and though he studied in Paris and spent several years travelling, he lived in the city for most of the rest of his life. But the city museum has only a handful of his paintings and the two key sights associated with the artist have long been closed for restoration. Now, finally, Aix is managing to pay a fulsome tribute to his achievements. From June 28, both his family home – the Jas De Bouffan – and the studio where he made his last and greatest work will re-open to the public. And on the same day, the Musée Granet opens a spectacular exhibition with loans from museums around the world. More than a century after his death, Cézanne is finally enjoying his moment in the Aix sunshine. There has never been a better time to visit France's most perfect city. On the Cézanne trail The Bastide de Jas de Bouffan This small estate on the edge of Aix, with its fine 18th-century house, was Cézanne's family home for 40 years. Bought by his father in 1859, when Paul was 20, it was inherited by the artist in 1886 and it remained his family home until 1899. Cézanne used the grand salon – originally designed as a main reception room – as his first studio, until another was built for him in the attic. He covered the walls with frescos and many of his still-lifes, portraits and landscapes were painted here, and some three dozen paintings were also made in the shady gardens. A famous series of his oil paintings, The Card Players, made here between 1890 and 1895, probably depict workers from the estate. The first phase of a major project to restore the house and gardens has just been completed. From June 18, visitors will be able to see the grand salon, the attic studio, the original Provençal kitchen and his mother's bedroom. Visit for more information. The Studio Cézanne's last atelier, where he produced some of his greatest masterpieces, has always been among the most atmospheric of all artists' studios. He bought the land in 1901, a plot which included olive groves, pine woods and fig plantations, and he built and designed the two-storey building himself. He never lived here, however, preferring to work to a strict timetable, waking at 4am and walking up the hill to the atelier, than working until 11am before heading back to his apartment in Aix in time for lunch. The viewpoint where he painted the late landscapes of Sainte-Victoire is about a 15-minute walk up the hill from here. The studio has been closed for restoration for more than a year, but reopens together with a new visitor centre on June 28 and, for the first time, you will be able to see the whole property, including his kitchen and living room. The Musée Granet As a centrepiece for the Cézanne celebrations, the main museum in Aix-en-Provence, the Granet, is holding a major exhibition: Cézanne au Jas de Bouffan. Loans from museums around the world include well over 100 paintings and studies which the artist made over 40 years in his studio at the family home, the Jas (see above), and is a rare chance to see so much of his work in Aix itself. When Cézanne died in 1906, the then director of the museum, who did not like his work, refused to buy any of it and since then it has acquired only a small collection of Cézanne paintings for its permanent collection). Visit for more information. Walking the streets A detailed itinerary organised by the tourist board and signed with hundreds of bronze inserts in the pavements takes in all the key sights and buildings in Aix which are associated with the artist and his family, including the secondary school – the Collège Bourbon – where he and Zola both studied, and the Cimetière Saint-Pierre where Cézanne himself is buried. A map of the route is available to view at The Bibémus Quarry The ancient quarry of ochre-coloured limestone, which produced much of the building material for Aix until it was abandoned in the 1830s, forms a hidden canyon among the maquis about five miles from the city. The geological forms and atmospheric shadows of this strangely beautiful netherworld of rock formations, geometric planes, angles and bridges were a critical influence on Cézanne. He came here as a boy in the 1840s and 1850s to explore and play with his friend Zola. Then, in 1895, he returned, rented a shack and started to sketch and paint. His experiments in capturing the angular shapes and perspectives and the contrasts in light and shade influenced his bigger landscapes and still-lifes – and, in turn, were soon to make a deep impression on two revolutionary young artists in Paris, Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, as they were developing their concept of cubism. You can visit the quarry by guided tour organised by the tourist office in Aix (€12). Mont Sainte-Victoire There are lots of trails in the countryside around this famous mountain which Cézanne depicted so many times – including one that reaches the summit (at 3,300ft). A selection of 11 marked itineraries, all about six or seven miles long, is available at Essentials There is a whole roster of events and exhibitions celebrating Cézanne in Aix in 2025 ( For more general information, see the Aix Tourist Office site ( There is also a specific one dedicated to Cézanne ( Aix's food markets take place on the Place des Comtales on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, 8.30am-1pm, and on the Place Richelme, daily 8am-1pm. The flower market is held in the place de l'Hôtel de Ville on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday mornings. Check out Telegraph Travel's recommended hotels in Aix. For a treat, the Villa Gallici is a cool and shady retreat on the northern fringes of the city (
The Guardian
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Back to the land: revisiting the streets of Aix-en-Provence, the birthplace of Paul Cezanne
When I was 12 years old, my parents moved my sister and me to Aix-en-Provence, the birthplace of and inspiration to Paul Cezanne. In truth, Cezanne had nothing to do with their choice of destination. But his mountain was the one thing my father knew of the region. He was three years into a four-year fine art degree (he painted portraits of the two of us daughters for his finals), steeped in painting and its history. When we landed at Marignane airport in nearby Marseille on 29 August 1989, a wildfire was ravaging the Sainte-Victoire, that celebrated mountain subject of so many of Cezanne's works. In the tumult of the days that followed – our family unhoused, the mountain unrecognisable – my father hustled between estate agents with the sound of sirens ringing in his ears. 'Cezanne must be turning in his grave,' he remembers one saying. In the 119 years since he died, Cezanne (no acute accent; it's how he spelled it himself) has been crowned the father of modern art. It's the lineage a host of disparate painters claimed in his wake. For Matisse he was 'the father of us all' and for Picasso, 'the mother who protects her children'. Futurists, cubists and fauvists felt the same. The symbolists said his was 'pure painting'. And Gauguin, well: he bought six Cezannes when he was flush and only parted with them under duress when he wasn't, having said, of the fabled Still Life with Fruit Dish from 1879-80, that he'd sooner sell everything he owned than lose it. Aix, by contrast, has mostly been famous for hardly owning any Cezannes at all: first because it didn't care to and then, when it was too late, because it couldn't afford to. This summer the town celebrates Cezanne 2025, a season dedicated to rewriting that story. The town set aside a budget of €26m for the full programme. This has included restoring and opening to the public the Bastide du Jas de Bouffan (the family's country home of 40 years); the Lauves studio to the north; and the Bibémus quarries in the foothills of the Sainte-Victoire where Cezanne often worked. Also included is a major exhibition at the Musée Granet, which opens today28 June, and reassembles for the first time works now housed in museums all over the world that Cezanne made in Aix; along with three other exhibitions in the town and a programme of live events. It is a family reunion. I have come back home to retrace Cezanne's footsteps, literally, in a kind of reductionary process I liken to the expert restorers' painstaking scraping off of decades of paint and paper on the walls of the old bastide. Growing up in Aix, 'Cezanne' was a local lycée, 'Bibémus' the rocks on which I learned to boulder, and the 'Jas', the neighbourhood in which I learned to drive. Returning to Aix, I want to walk where he walked to scrape these words back to their earlier meanings – to let these familiar landscapes be his once again. Cezanne was born in 1839 in the old town centre. He lived in various homes in these narrow streets and, at 13, befriended the author Émile Zola on the school benches of the Collège Bourbon, now the Collège Mignet. His hatmaker father, Louis-Auguste, made so much money selling rabbit-skin wares (the big Aixois industry of his day) that he invested in a bank, in the process becoming even richer. When Cezanne was 20, his father purchased the bastide as a country retreat. From then on, and until his mother's death in 1899, it would be what the president of the Société Paul Cezanne and co-curator of the exhibition, Denis Coutagne, calls 'the centre of gravity' of Cezanne's world. It is where he painted his first big works as a twentysomething, directly on to the decorative walls of the ground-floor Grand Salon. Recent restorations have revealed further Cezannes no one knew about – a scene of a port entrance he then partly painted over with a scene of a game of hide and seek. When the latter was removed to canvas by the home's new owner, along with the Four Seasons and other famous panels, and sold on to museums, these fragments were simply papered over and forgotten about. In 1880, Louis-Auguste, who definitely viewed the property as something to boast about, nonetheless built Cezanne a studio: an enviably large room on the top floor, with a remarkably modern double-height window that bluntly interrupts the symmetry of the mansion's facade. As Laforest puts it, that in itself puts paid to the myth that the father did not support the son's endeavours. I stand at the window. But for the military row of cypress trees forming an extra barrier inside the property wall to the right, I know the mountain is right there. On clear days, from the Jas, it appears as a perfect Matisse-like cutout in pale blue against a paler sky. Musée Granet director Bruno Ely, the other co-curator of the exhibition, tells me that the 1989 fire brought the Sainte-Victoire back to something closer to what Cezanne knew: the pine forest that was burning when I arrived is a 20th-century phenomenon. In the 19th century, all these hills were kept closely cropped by flocks of sheep. From the bastide to the Bibémus quarries takes about an hour and a half on foot. Cezanne would hitch a ride with a driver and a cart to get a bit closer, but once in what are now Aix's north-eastern heights, he'd still have to walk an hour to reach the quarry. As I'm walking – from the bastide to the quarry to the dam Zola's father built and down into Le Tholonet, where Cezanne lived later on; then back into town along the petite Route du Tholonet, which culture minister André Malraux had listed and renamed as the Route Cezanne in 1959 – I watch the mountain, this constant presence. You might say that the Mont Sainte-Victoire, as he called it, was to Cezanne what Rouen Cathedral was to Monet. However, his approach was completely at odds with the impressionists'. Monet recorded the changing light: it's right there in the titles ('grey skies', 'sunshine', 'at sunset'). By contrast, Cezanne's concerns, as Coutagne puts it, are 'never documentary', 'never meteorological', never about 'the instant'. In 1876, Cezanne writes to a friend about olive trees having a greyish colour that is 'permanent'. Matisse, Cezanne's junior by 30 years, understood this. He wrote to a friend in 1918 that 'the olive trees are so beautiful at this hour: the full light of day is magnificent, but frightening. I find that Cezanne conveyed it well, happily not in its brilliance, which is unbearable.' Light, sure, but not changing light; essential light. Sign up to Inside Saturday The only way to get a look behind the scenes of the Saturday magazine. Sign up to get the inside story from our top writers as well as all the must-read articles and columns, delivered to your inbox every weekend. after newsletter promotion Art historians have long landed on the notion of 'thingness', to describe what Cezanne sought: not the way a thing looked, but what it was. His allegiance to the supremely local isn't about identifying with the place, but rather that every rock or tree or house he painted is one he saw. That specificity is what makes his work so profoundly, universally resonant. What makes Cezanne's paintings so radical is how he arrived, as Coutagne puts it, 'like a meteor … Nothing, no one prefigures him.' His oeuvre resolutely denies the illusion of all the figurative painting that came before him. It forces the viewer to reckon with his painted surface, to not be duped into thinking that said painting is a window on to the world. Cezanne's Lauves studio, which he built in 1901, is a building site when I visit, inaccessible until later in the summer. Fresh apples have usually been displayed here, much like the fresh lemon left on a pewter plate in the Kettle's Yard gallery in Cambridge, displayed to echo the yellow dot in Joan Miró's Tic Tic, which hangs on the adjacent wall. But perhaps this is why I've never been much inclined to go inside the Lauves studio: with Cezanne, I want to see his apples – that painted appleness – not fresh fruit. Virginia Woolf once wrote about her sister, Vanessa Bell, persuading John Maynard Keynes to lend them a tiny Cezanne he'd just bought – a 1878 still life of seven apples titled Pommes – because their friend Roger Fry wanted to copy it. 'Nessa left the room and reappeared with a small parcel about the size of a large slab of chocolate. On one side are six [sic] apples by Cezanne. Roger very nearly lost his senses. I've never seen such a sight of intoxication. He was like a bee on a sunflower. Imagine … us all gloating upon these apples. They really are very superb.' I finish with a visit to Cezanne's grave in the Saint-Pierre Cemetery. I add a pebble to a few already perched on its aged surface and think about Patti Smith. Her A Book of Days is filled with Polaroids of the headstones of authors she's visited: Rimbaud, Camus, Woolf, Jean Genet. While you can buy a novel for a tenner or read it for free at a library, visiting a writer's grave offers something else, something closer to the unique experience of holding a handwritten manuscript or seeing where the writer sat to write it. A painter's grave though? Standing here, I am both moved and left wanting. It's his actual paintings I want to see. And to see Cezanne originals, you normally have to go on a grand tour, a modern-day pilgrimage, to the big museums of the world. This July, they are, remarkably, all coming to Aix. So I'm heading home again this summer to see those, too. Cezanne at Jas De Bouffan is at Musée Granet, Aix-en-Provence, France, from today to 12 October.
The Advertiser
14-06-2025
- Sport
- The Advertiser
All the photos from the Mark Hughes Foundation charity race day in Newcastle
What had felt like days of oppressive grey cloud broke over Newcastle Saturday in a blustery and cool turn perfect for an afternoon on the field. The Newcastle Racecourse was busy with activity as the starters broke from the barricades in a eight-race event to raise funds and support for the Mark Hughes Foundation and its ongoing fight against brain cancer. "The support from Newcastle Racecourse and our community is incredible. Each year, the Race Day grows stronger, helping us make significant strides in brain cancer research and support services," Former Newcastle Knight Mark Hughes, who was at the event at the weekend with his family, said in a statement leading up to the event. The cornerstone fundraiser included a portion of ticket sales donated directly to the foundation and a charity auction, merchandise sales and other fundraising for the cause. "The race day not only offers thrilling racing action but also brings our community together to support a cause that touches many lives," Newcastle Racecourse boss Duane Dowell said. Jockey Grant Buckley steered Wyong bay Aix En Provence, trained by Sara Ryan, to win the MHF Cup in race seven on Saturday afternoon, June 7, while Chris Waller, who famously trained legendary racehorse Winx, picked up a win in the third race of the day in the Maiden Plate with three-year-old gelding Procean. What had felt like days of oppressive grey cloud broke over Newcastle Saturday in a blustery and cool turn perfect for an afternoon on the field. The Newcastle Racecourse was busy with activity as the starters broke from the barricades in a eight-race event to raise funds and support for the Mark Hughes Foundation and its ongoing fight against brain cancer. "The support from Newcastle Racecourse and our community is incredible. Each year, the Race Day grows stronger, helping us make significant strides in brain cancer research and support services," Former Newcastle Knight Mark Hughes, who was at the event at the weekend with his family, said in a statement leading up to the event. The cornerstone fundraiser included a portion of ticket sales donated directly to the foundation and a charity auction, merchandise sales and other fundraising for the cause. "The race day not only offers thrilling racing action but also brings our community together to support a cause that touches many lives," Newcastle Racecourse boss Duane Dowell said. Jockey Grant Buckley steered Wyong bay Aix En Provence, trained by Sara Ryan, to win the MHF Cup in race seven on Saturday afternoon, June 7, while Chris Waller, who famously trained legendary racehorse Winx, picked up a win in the third race of the day in the Maiden Plate with three-year-old gelding Procean. What had felt like days of oppressive grey cloud broke over Newcastle Saturday in a blustery and cool turn perfect for an afternoon on the field. The Newcastle Racecourse was busy with activity as the starters broke from the barricades in a eight-race event to raise funds and support for the Mark Hughes Foundation and its ongoing fight against brain cancer. "The support from Newcastle Racecourse and our community is incredible. Each year, the Race Day grows stronger, helping us make significant strides in brain cancer research and support services," Former Newcastle Knight Mark Hughes, who was at the event at the weekend with his family, said in a statement leading up to the event. The cornerstone fundraiser included a portion of ticket sales donated directly to the foundation and a charity auction, merchandise sales and other fundraising for the cause. "The race day not only offers thrilling racing action but also brings our community together to support a cause that touches many lives," Newcastle Racecourse boss Duane Dowell said. Jockey Grant Buckley steered Wyong bay Aix En Provence, trained by Sara Ryan, to win the MHF Cup in race seven on Saturday afternoon, June 7, while Chris Waller, who famously trained legendary racehorse Winx, picked up a win in the third race of the day in the Maiden Plate with three-year-old gelding Procean. What had felt like days of oppressive grey cloud broke over Newcastle Saturday in a blustery and cool turn perfect for an afternoon on the field. The Newcastle Racecourse was busy with activity as the starters broke from the barricades in a eight-race event to raise funds and support for the Mark Hughes Foundation and its ongoing fight against brain cancer. "The support from Newcastle Racecourse and our community is incredible. Each year, the Race Day grows stronger, helping us make significant strides in brain cancer research and support services," Former Newcastle Knight Mark Hughes, who was at the event at the weekend with his family, said in a statement leading up to the event. The cornerstone fundraiser included a portion of ticket sales donated directly to the foundation and a charity auction, merchandise sales and other fundraising for the cause. "The race day not only offers thrilling racing action but also brings our community together to support a cause that touches many lives," Newcastle Racecourse boss Duane Dowell said. Jockey Grant Buckley steered Wyong bay Aix En Provence, trained by Sara Ryan, to win the MHF Cup in race seven on Saturday afternoon, June 7, while Chris Waller, who famously trained legendary racehorse Winx, picked up a win in the third race of the day in the Maiden Plate with three-year-old gelding Procean.
The Advertiser
07-06-2025
- Sport
- The Advertiser
Photos from the Mark Hughes Foundation charity race day in Newcastle
What had felt like days of oppressive grey cloud broke over Newcastle Saturday in a blustery and cool turn perfect for an afternoon on the field. The Newcastle Racecourse was busy with activity as the starters broke from the barricades in a eight-race event to raise funds and support for the Mark Hughes Foundation and its ongoing fight against brain cancer. "The support from Newcastle Racecourse and our community is incredible. Each year, the Race Day grows stronger, helping us make significant strides in brain cancer research and support services," Former Newcastle Knight Mark Hughes, who was at the event at the weekend with his family, said in a statement leading up to the event. The cornerstone fundraiser included a portion of ticket sales donated directly to the foundation as well as a charity auction, merchandise sales and other fundraisingf for the cause. "The race day not only offers thrilling racing action but also brings our community together to support a cause that touches many lives," Newcastle Racecourse boss Duane Dowell said. Jockey Grant Buckley steered Wyong bay Aix En Provence, trained by Sara Ryan, to win the MHF Cup in race seven on Saturday afternoon, June 7, while Chris Waller, who famously trained legendary racehorse Winx, picked up a win in the third race of the day in the Maiden Plate with three-year-old gelding Procean. What had felt like days of oppressive grey cloud broke over Newcastle Saturday in a blustery and cool turn perfect for an afternoon on the field. The Newcastle Racecourse was busy with activity as the starters broke from the barricades in a eight-race event to raise funds and support for the Mark Hughes Foundation and its ongoing fight against brain cancer. "The support from Newcastle Racecourse and our community is incredible. Each year, the Race Day grows stronger, helping us make significant strides in brain cancer research and support services," Former Newcastle Knight Mark Hughes, who was at the event at the weekend with his family, said in a statement leading up to the event. The cornerstone fundraiser included a portion of ticket sales donated directly to the foundation as well as a charity auction, merchandise sales and other fundraisingf for the cause. "The race day not only offers thrilling racing action but also brings our community together to support a cause that touches many lives," Newcastle Racecourse boss Duane Dowell said. Jockey Grant Buckley steered Wyong bay Aix En Provence, trained by Sara Ryan, to win the MHF Cup in race seven on Saturday afternoon, June 7, while Chris Waller, who famously trained legendary racehorse Winx, picked up a win in the third race of the day in the Maiden Plate with three-year-old gelding Procean. What had felt like days of oppressive grey cloud broke over Newcastle Saturday in a blustery and cool turn perfect for an afternoon on the field. The Newcastle Racecourse was busy with activity as the starters broke from the barricades in a eight-race event to raise funds and support for the Mark Hughes Foundation and its ongoing fight against brain cancer. "The support from Newcastle Racecourse and our community is incredible. Each year, the Race Day grows stronger, helping us make significant strides in brain cancer research and support services," Former Newcastle Knight Mark Hughes, who was at the event at the weekend with his family, said in a statement leading up to the event. The cornerstone fundraiser included a portion of ticket sales donated directly to the foundation as well as a charity auction, merchandise sales and other fundraisingf for the cause. "The race day not only offers thrilling racing action but also brings our community together to support a cause that touches many lives," Newcastle Racecourse boss Duane Dowell said. Jockey Grant Buckley steered Wyong bay Aix En Provence, trained by Sara Ryan, to win the MHF Cup in race seven on Saturday afternoon, June 7, while Chris Waller, who famously trained legendary racehorse Winx, picked up a win in the third race of the day in the Maiden Plate with three-year-old gelding Procean. What had felt like days of oppressive grey cloud broke over Newcastle Saturday in a blustery and cool turn perfect for an afternoon on the field. The Newcastle Racecourse was busy with activity as the starters broke from the barricades in a eight-race event to raise funds and support for the Mark Hughes Foundation and its ongoing fight against brain cancer. "The support from Newcastle Racecourse and our community is incredible. Each year, the Race Day grows stronger, helping us make significant strides in brain cancer research and support services," Former Newcastle Knight Mark Hughes, who was at the event at the weekend with his family, said in a statement leading up to the event. The cornerstone fundraiser included a portion of ticket sales donated directly to the foundation as well as a charity auction, merchandise sales and other fundraisingf for the cause. "The race day not only offers thrilling racing action but also brings our community together to support a cause that touches many lives," Newcastle Racecourse boss Duane Dowell said. Jockey Grant Buckley steered Wyong bay Aix En Provence, trained by Sara Ryan, to win the MHF Cup in race seven on Saturday afternoon, June 7, while Chris Waller, who famously trained legendary racehorse Winx, picked up a win in the third race of the day in the Maiden Plate with three-year-old gelding Procean.
