Orange County Couple
Orange County Couple, Linda Volrath, oil on linen, 16 x 20 inches
This painting by Linda Volrath is part of an exhibition now hanging at Long Branch, a historic house and farm venue in Boyce, Virginia. Volrath’s sporting art and her husband Steven Parrish’s polished and light-hearted still life compositions will hang until the end of October.
U.S. Senators Tackle Horse Slaughter…Again
US Capitol / Wikimedia Commons Image
Legislation to permanently ban horse slaughter in the United States has been introduced by a bipartisan group of U.S. senators. The proposed bill would also ban the transportation of horses for slaughter. Congress effectively ended all horse slaughter in the country about ten years ago, but the General Accounting Office (GAO) reported that horse welfare suffered as a result.
The new bill―Save America’s Forgotten Equines (SAFE)―is sponsored by U.S. Senators Susan Collins, R-Maine, Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, Robert Menendez, D-New Jersey, and Sheldon Whitehouse, D-Rhode Island. Senator Whitehouse, for one, is certainly knowledgeable about equine issues. His father, Charles, a former ambassador, served as Master of the Orange County Hounds (VA) after retiring from foreign service.
While the bill is crafted to save horses’ lives, the real question is will it solve the underlying problem of unwanted horses? Or will those horses’ lives become even more tragic because humane euthanasia is denied? Without funding as a part of this or any such bill, I’m afraid so.
The Gray Fox
Blane Klemek, a wildlife manager with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, describes gray foxes as cat-like and rarely seen. Cat-like in that it is the only canid that can climb trees with ease. Which it does to escape predators or pursue its own prey.
Millbrook Hunt Hosts Season’s Performance Trial Opener
RoseTree-Blue Mountain prevails with all five entries finishing among the top-ten overall scoring hounds, including Bridle 2015, the winner.
Through an early morning mist, foxhounds are in full cry after the coyote. This excellent video was filmed on the second day of the Millboo Hunt Foxhound Performance Trials. / Video by Marion Latta de Vogel
The first of ten foxhound performance trials scheduled across North America this season is history. Millbrook Hunt (NY) hosted the 2021/2022 opener on September 8 and 9, 2021. Participants enjoyed superb weather, gorgeous country, exciting sport, and Millbrook’s unparalleled hospitality.
The first nine trials are qualifiers for the tenth and final Grand Championship Trials. That final showdown is scheduled for March 26 and 27, 2022, in Hoffman, North Carolina, where a national champion and the top ten foxhounds countrywide will be recognized.
Toulouse-Lautrec: Horses, Hounds, and the Hunt
This astonishing photograph, sent by Debra Pring, shows Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec standing by horse and hound and holding a French stag hunting horn.
And here we thought that the Master Post-Impressionist spent all his spare time at the Moulin Rouge with wine, dancers, prostitutes, and his fellow artist friends. Not so! Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec was well familiar with horses, hounds, and stag hunting.
Britain’s National Trust Members to Vote on Draghunt Ban
In late October, more than five million members of Britain’s National Trust will be asked to vote on whether or not trail-hunting should be banned on trust-owned land. Seems ironic considering that so many of the donors of the properties and lands now held by the trust were country sportsmen, sportswomen, and foxhunters. A similar […]
The Blue Birdseye Stock Tie
Blue Birdseye stock ties in the field at the Orange County Vixens’ Meet in 2020. / Joanne Maisano photo
Six or seven years ago, Foxhunting Life published a story about an attractive item of attire from foxhunting’s earliest days―the blue birdseye stock tie. Eye-catching and colorful, it can be seen in eighteenth-century foxhunting prints if you look closely.
Mostly unknown in North America, the blue birdseye stock tie had long been worn by a stylish and knowledgeable few in England and Ireland. We decided it deserved to be resurrected here as well. So, we located appropriate material and introduced it to North American foxhunters in our shop. It was a hit, and since then, at the start of every new season―strictly for fun―we publish an article of reminder. And the story.
Quorn Members Found Not Guilty
Hugo Mynell of Quorn Hall, Leicestershire, and considered the Father of Modern Foxhunting, was Master of The Quorn from 1753 to 1800.
Quorn huntsman John Finnegan and his whipper-in at the time, Rhys Matcham, accused of hunting wild mammals with dogs in contravention of England’s Hunting Act of 2004, were cleared of all charges in Leicestershire Magistrates’ Court on August 24, 2021.
The League Against Cruel Sports (LACS) provided filmed evidence to the court from which prosecutors claimed the footage showed “a proper fox hunt going back to the olden days.” The incident is alleged to have occurred on February 24, 2020. Finnegan and Matcham denied the charges and entered not guilty pleas in March 2021.
Alfred Wheeler’s Duster
Duster by Alfred Wheeler, 1910, oil on board, 8 x 9-1/2 inches, framed 11-1/2 x 13 inches, $4,500.
Here’s a small, nicely-framed painting of a foxhound by a respected English artist born in the mid-nineteenth century. It is priced at $4,500 by an equally respected art gallery in New York. If I were starting my own collection of sporting art and still had wall space in my home (and my other bills were paid), I would buy it.
The painting is a head-and-neck portrait of an Old (traditionally-bred) English foxhound, clearly from the days when English hunt staff cropped the ears―happily no longer practiced. It’s not terribly creative. Rather formulaic when compared to another painting by the same artist―this other hound being one in a set of five small paintings of four hounds and a pair of hunters from the Duke of Beaufort’s establishment. The two are similar in anatomy, view, and shading technique but different in the ear and eye details.
Fox Bounty Levied in South Australia
More than 20,000 foxes are expected to be killed in South Australia as the result of new legislation creating a bounty on foxes. The intention is to reduce predation on livestock and poultry.
Deemed necessary, this unfortunate legislation reminds us yet again of the unintended consequences when humans blithely introduce non-indigenous animals, insects, and even plants into a balanced ecosystem.