Vanderbilt Cup Races

In celebration of their Silver Anniversary, the Packard Club commissioned Peter Helck in 1978 to create a special cover painting for The Packard Cormorant, their official magazine.

Peter Helck based the painting on a piece of an earlier painting depicting the Packard Gray Wolf making the turn on to Hempstead Turnpike from the Massapequa-Hicksville Road during the 1904 Vanderbilt Cup Race. Peter Helck stated in The Packard Cormorant; "It follows that fragment up to a point. But everything in the Cormorant painting has been withdraw and some areas recomposed."

Both paintings ere derived from this image of the Gray Wolf taken from the 1904 film of the Vanderbilt Cup Race by American Mutoscope & Biograph (see the Packard at 1:01 of the film):

Links to related posts on VanderbiltCupRaces:

A Tribute to Peter Helck (1893-1988), the Great American Artist

Archives:1904 Vanderbilt Cup Race