Peter Biegel

Born in Croxley Green, Hertfordshire, Peter Biegel came from a family of artists and horsemen. His natural affinity for horses would become the defining subject of his career, establishing him as a distinguished British sporting artist.

After attending Downside School and spending five years in his father’s business in the City, Biegel began formal training at Lucy Kemp-Welch’s school in Bushey in 1938. The Second World War interrupted his studies, and he served with the Wiltshire Regiment before being invalided home from Normandy in 1944.

Following further study at Bournemouth School of Art, a chance meeting on a train with Lionel Edwards led to a year working under the celebrated sporting painter at his studio near Salisbury. Biegel became Edwards’s only pupil.

His subjects ranged from individual horse portraits to lively scenes of hunting, steeplechasing, flat racing, point-to-points and show jumping. He exhibited at the Rowland Ward Gallery in Piccadilly and later at the Tryon Gallery in London. His work reached a wider audience through prints and his popular Christmas card designs for the Injured Jockeys Fund, including a 1964 design featuring the celebrated chasers Pas Seul, Arkle, Mill House and King’s Nephew, which sold more than 85,000 copies.