Art

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!

Sculpture by Marcela Ganly

The Connecticut Cancer Foundation (CCF) of Old Saybrook, Connecticut will celebrate their Inaugural Gallery Exhibition, Horses: In Harmony, with a Reception and Gallery Discussion open to the public. The exhibit will be curated by Marsha Malinowski of Malinowski & Associates, Fine Art Advisory. The celebration will take place on Friday, September 28, 2018 from six to eight pm.

The exhibition will remain on display from Friday, September 28 until October 26, 2018. It is the first such exhibit to be presented in the new CCF Gallery in Old Saybrook, and it will introduce three acclaimed Argentinian artists to the American art world—sculptor Marcela Ganly, artist Esteban Diaz Mathé, and photographer Aldo Sessa.

Review by Norman Fine

The Sporting Life: The Art of Joseph H. Sulkowski, text by Brooke Chilvers, Foreword by Lorian Peralta-Ramos, Sporting Classics, 2017, hardcover, 240 pp., $60. Available from Dog and Horse Fine Art in their Charleston, South Carolina gallery, via email, or telephone (834-577-5500)

Here is a beautifully designed and magnificently produced coffee table book of sporting art: two hundred forty pages filled with high quality color reproductions of more than 180 paintings and sketches by Joseph Sulkowski. The 12-1/4 x 11-1/4 hard bound volume was meticulously printed on fine quality coated stock so substantial I was tempted to measure the thickness with a wooden ruler. The book weighs in at five pounds.

But here’s the thing. It’s not just a book of brilliant paintings; it’s a college level course in art appreciation by a writer, Brooke Chilvers, who at age seventeen moved herself to Paris to study art history. Upon completing her studies, Chilvers embarked on a year-long camping trip, after which she married Rudy Lubin, a French professional hunter who operated in the French Republic of Africa for forty years. Chilvers has been the editor of African Hunting Gazette for twelve years and the art columnist for Gray’s Sporting Journal for fifteen years. She has filled high-level offices in international hunting organizations and won journalistic awards for her writing.

Larry Wheeler, 16 x 20, oil on canvas, "Catch," Deep Run Hunt Here’s a final reminder, latest information, and sneak-preview of the Art Show at Morven Park to be presented by the Museum of Hounds and Hunting over the Virginia Foxhound Show weekend. The Opening at 4 PM and the Reception at 5 PM on Saturday, May 26, 2018, the day before the hound show, will be for Museum members, their guests, and the artists. The show opens to the public on Sunday morning, the day of the hound show, and the works will remain on display until June 25th.

Piedmont Fox Hounds II by Rev. Michael TangThe Museum of Hounds And Hunting will present an art show, The Year of the Hound: Showcasing the Foxhunts of Virginia. The show will open with a reception at Morven Park over the Virginia Foxhound Show Weekend. Artwork for the show has been created throughout the past foxhunting season by invited members of the American Academy of Equine Art (AAEA), a national organization founded in the Virginia Hunt Country in 1980.

All pieces—paintings and sculptures—will be new works of art representing every registered foxhunt in the Commonwealth: twenty-five active hunts. The show will open at 4 PM in the Morven Park Mansion, Leesburg, Virginia, on Saturday, May 26, 2018. An Opening Reception will be held Saturday evening from 5–7 PM. The show will be open on Sunday as well (the day of the hound show), and all works will remain on view until Saturday, June 30. The show will include about fifty new works by Signature members of the AAEA. All art will be for sale, and a portion of sales will benefit the Museum of Hounds and Hunting.

The foxhunter is an expert on the breathtaking beauty of the early morning light. Who of us hasn’t been entranced on an autumn hunting morning as the first rays of sunlight refract through a gazillion dew-crystals on the trees and the natural world morphes from gray to brilliance. I am especially taken by artists who can capture those fleeting moments, allowing us to dwell on the scene—something the sun never does!

Carol Lee Thompson is a full-time professional artist, classically trained in the methods of the Old Masters. She paints a wide range of subject matter, including equine and animal art, landscapes, foxhunting, and western themes. And she loves to play with light.

Heading Home, oil on canvas, Andre.Pater

The upcoming Sporting Art Auction on Sunday, November 19, 2017, at the Keeneland Sales Pavilion promises to be another outstanding sale for sporting art lovers. Several lots by contemporary American and European artists such as Michael Lyne, Andre Pater, and Juli Kirk feature both British and North American foxhunting. Estimated prices for the various foxhunting works range from $3,000 to $150,000. Click to view the catalog.

The hammer will fall on paintings by renowned artists such as John Frederick Herring, Jr., Henry Stull, Harry Hall, Henry Alken, Sr., John Emms, Gustav Muss-Arnolt, Franklin Voss, Lionel Edwards, Richard Stone Reeves, and Alfred Munnings. In the category of sculpture, works by Pierre Jules Mene, Alexa King, Marilyn Newmark, LeRoy Nieman, and others will be auctioned.

Original painted canvas wall hanging by Lisa Curry Mair (3 feet x 6 feet)

Artist Lisa Curry Mair works in a unique genre from her studio in an eighteenth-century farm at the base of Mount Ascutney in Perkinsville, Vermont. She creates paintings, custom murals, and floorcloths on canvas in a folk-art style. Much of her work includes foxhunting scenes.

Mair’s commissions have come from Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, several National Historic Sites, and hundreds of homeowners with specific ideas of what they wanted painted for their homes. Over the last twenty-five years of research, study, and “lots of mistakes,” she has developed the tools and knowhow to bring the client’s vision to light. Mair has attended classes and workshops since minoring in Art at Acadia University in Nova Scotia (while majoring in Mathematics and focusing on a career in riding).

"Being original is for true artists," says Brooke Major.

While auditing art classes at the fine art school in Paris, France, Brooke Major, an American artist, was told that painting was finished. There was nothing new to be discovered. Since her passions included both painting and sculpting, she decided to prove the art professor’s statement wrong, and sculpt paint.

“I have chosen monochrome white,” said Major, “since white is a reflection of light and can be changed into any color." By changing the color of the lighting, by lighting from different directions, and even by lighting from behind, the optical illusions produced by a single painting may be completely transformed.

It takes a village to maintain the White Horse of Uffington

Not all art restoration is done with mild cleaners and painstaking brushwork every hundred years or so. In Oxfordshire, England, it takes a village equipped with hammers, buckets of chalk, and kneepads every few years.

Carved into the chalky grasslands of the Berkshire Downs three thousand years ago by an ancient people, the White Horse of Uffington covers the size of a football field and is visible from twenty miles away. And were it not for the people who originally created it, and all the tribes people and villagers who have resided in the vicinity ever since and maintained it, this amazing artistic accomplishment would have completely disappeared thousands of years ago.