Three Tries, the Charm, for Field Hunter Champion
John Wittenborn and Soccer, representing the Smithtown Hunt (NY), win 2018 Theodora Randolph Field Hunter Championship in Virginia.
John Wittenborn and his fourteen-year-old Clydesdale-Thoroughbred cross, Soccer, returned home to Long Island and the Smithtown Hunt with the Championship Trophy and ribbon from the Theodora Randolph 2018 Field Hunter Championship in Virginia. Three tries was the charm for Wittenborn and Soccer. Last year the pair made a good showing, placing third.
It was the first team from a northern hunt to have won the coveted prize in thirty-five years of competitions. And it was fitting; Mrs. Randolph was a northerner, though from Boston’s North Shore.
Duke of Buccleuch Master and Huntsman On Trial
Timothy Allen, MFH and Shaun Anderson, huntsman of the Duke of Buccleuch’s Hunt in Scotland appeared in the Jedburgh Sheriff Court on October 8th on a charge of breaching Scotland’s Protection of Wild Mammals Act by deliberately hunting a fox with a pack of hounds. The pair pled not guilty. Last year, Johnny Riley and […]
Horse Racing Terms: An Illustrated Guide (2)
Book Review by Norman Fine
Horse Racing Terms: An Illustrated Guide by Rosemary Coates, Merlin Unwin Books (UK), hardbound, illustrated in color, 140 pages, available online or directly from publisher, £8.99
Though this book is about the language of horse racing, much of the content is common to all horse people. And hunt racing and steeplechasing terms are included. And the little volume is the work of Rosemary Coates—a favorite illustrator of ours, whose work illuminates Deirdre Hanna’s humorous and continuing series about the two nineteen-year-old girls who left post-war England to work with horses in America.
Maiden, weaver, hands, claimer, the going, pony (the verb!), schooling, stayer—these and more than a hundred other examples of the arcane language of racing and horsemanship are tackled, many accompanied by Rosemary’s clever paintings. Also included is an alphabetic Glossary of Terms and a serious page on “How to read a Racecard.” Just the latter alone could turn the modest price of this book into a sound investment for the occasional race-goer’s next outing at the steeplechase course or racetrack.
Horse Racing Terms: An Illustrated Guide
Book Review by Norman Fine
Horse Racing Terms: An Illustrated Guide by Rosemary Coates, Merlin Unwin Books (UK), hardbound, illustrated in color, 140 pages, available online or directly from publisher, £8.99
Though this book is about the language of horse racing, much of the content is common to all horse people. And hunt racing and steeplechasing terms are included. And the little volume is the work of Rosemary Coates—a favorite illustrator of ours, whose work illuminates Deirdre Hanna’s humorous and continuing series about the two nineteen-year-old girls who left post-war England to work with horses in America.
Maiden, weaver, hands, claimer, the going, pony (the verb!), schooling, stayer—these and more than a hundred other examples of the arcane language of racing and horsemanship are tackled, many accompanied by Rosemary’s clever paintings. Also included is an alphabetic Glossary of Terms and a serious page on “How to read a Racecard.” Just the latter alone could turn the modest price of this book into a sound investment for the occasional race-goer’s next outing at the steeplechase course or racetrack.
Sporting Art Auction 2018 at Keeneland
Lot 49, Portrait of a Hound, Franklin Voss (1880–1953), American, oil on board, 12″ x 16″, signed, dated 1939, Probably commissioned by Anderson Fowler, MFH, Essex Fox Hounds (NJ): $5,000–7,000
November 18, 2018 will mark the sixth annual Sporting Art Auction at the Keeneland Sales Pavilion—a cooperative venture between the world’s largest Thoroughbred auction house and its Lexington, Kentucky neighbor, Cross Gate Gallery, a leading source of the world’s finest sporting art. Collectors will take home works of artistic merit at prices possibly as low as $2,000, many under $5,000, and others as high as six figures.
This year’s offerings, curated by Greg Ladd, feature 175 lots of painting and sculpture by masters long gone as well as by leading sporting artists of the day. Among the European artists represented are Cecil Alden, Samuel Alken, Lionel Edwards, John Emms, John Ferneley, Harry Hall, John Herring, Michael Lyne, Sir Alfred Munnings, and Belinda Sillars. American artists include Jean Bowman, Paul Brown, Herbert Haseltine, Julie Kirk, Booth Malone, Leroy Neiman, Richard Stone Reeves, Edward Troye, Larry Wheeler, and Franklin Voss. Also included are six works by America’s reigning ‘rock star’ of today’s sporting art world, Andre Pater.
Sporting Art Auction 2018 at Keeneland
Lot 49, Portrait of a Hound, Franklin Voss (1880–1953), American, oil on board, 12″ x 16″, signed, dated 1939, Probably commissioned by Anderson Fowler, MFH, Essex Fox Hounds (NJ): $5,000–7,000
November 18, 2018 will mark the sixth annual Sporting Art Auction at the Keeneland Sales Pavilion—a cooperative venture between the world’s largest Thoroughbred auction house and its Lexington, Kentucky neighbor, Cross Gate Gallery, a leading source of the world’s finest sporting art. Collectors will take home works of artistic merit at prices possibly as low as $2,000, many under $5,000, and others as high as six figures.
This year’s offerings, curated by Greg Ladd, feature 175 lots of painting and sculpture by masters long gone as well as by leading sporting artists of the day. Among the European artists represented are Cecil Alden, Samuel Alken, Lionel Edwards, John Emms, John Ferneley, Harry Hall, John Herring, Michael Lyne, Sir Alfred Munnings, and Belinda Sillars. American artists include Jean Bowman, Paul Brown, Herbert Haseltine, Julie Kirk, Booth Malone, Leroy Neiman, Richard Stone Reeves, Edward Troye, Larry Wheeler, and Franklin Voss. Also included are six works by America’s reigning ‘rock star’ of today’s sporting art world, Andre Pater.
Moonstone by John Emms
John Emms (English, 1843 – 1912), Moonstone, 1895, oil on canvas, 15½ x 22 inches, framed: 20 1/4 x 26 ½ inches, provenance: Malcolm Innes Gallery, London, private collection, Virginia
John Emms’ portrait of Moonstone was just circulated by the William Secord Gallery as their Painting of the Week. I chose to use it in this issue because (1) John Emms is a brilliant painter of foxhounds and (2) Moonstone is a fair illustration of the foxhound that was all the fashion of its time.
This particular Emms painting can serve as a segue into my Book Review below. Daphne Moore, the subject of Alastair Jackson’s excellent biography, The Lady of the Hunt, would not have appreciated seeing Moonstone in any pack she hunted with!
The Lady of the Chase
Book Review by Norman Fine
The Lady of the Chase, Alastair Jackson, Merlyn Unwin Books (UK), 2018, Hardcover, 208 pp, illustrated, available direct from publisher, book stores, and popular online sources.
Daphne Moore is Alastair Jackson’s Lady of the Chase. Before reading this new book, I knew of Daphne Moore only as an author. Her book, Foxhounds, published in 1981, is an excellent account of the revolt against the ponderous and massively-built English foxhound of the early twentieth century and the development of the lighter, active, and athletic animal we know today as the Modern English foxhound.
I learned a lot about foxhounds in Moore’s book, but I didn’t get to know Daphne Moore in the least. Now, Alastair Jackson’s biography of this fascinating lady has brought her to life for me—her joys (hunting), her problems (finances), her talents (writing and painting), and her sorrows (the loss of the one, brief love in her life to World War II). For any foxhunter with a passion for the hunting field, foxhounds, foxhunting people, and revered names still on our lips today, Jackson’s book will be a delight.
Owney
The Border Terrier is a familiar breed to foxhunters, especially in the sheep farming districts of England and Scotland. They were bred on the English-Scottish Border to run with the foxhound packs. When the fox went to ground the Border Terrier would go in and bark so the men knew where to dig. But did you know that a Border Terrier named Owney was the first nationwide mascot of the United States Postal Service? Owney reigned for nine years, from 1887 to mid-1897, traveling over 140,000 miles throughout the forty-eight states and around the world.
Owney belonged to a clerk at the Albany post office who often brought the dog to work. He seemed to love the smell of mail bags and slept on them whenever he was there. The clerk eventually quit the post office, but knowing that the dog seemed happiest with the mail bags, he left him beind. The postal employees in Albany soon discovered that Owney didn’t want to leave the bags when they were loaded onto the trains, so he was allowed to travel with them.
Why Some Autumn Hunts are Unforgettable
Frances Player photo Early every season, foxhunters get to sit for a special moment on a horse, in the midst of the natural world, as the rising sun ignites crystals of dew, and the slanting light creeps across the once dark fields. All is silent but for nature’s sounds, and then… “…the sounds of the […]