Art

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.

Rush Hour by Booth Malone

In concert with the Virginia Foxhound Club and the Museum of Hounds and Hunting, selected members of the American Academy of Equine Artists (AAEA) have been organized by Academy President Booth Malone to produce a body of artwork for a foxhunting art show.

The idea for the show was conceived by Mrs. Ned “Nina” Bonnie (KY) and Michael Tang (CA). Every MFHA-registered foxhunting club in Virginia will be represented in sculpture and/or in painting by one or more of North America’s leading contemporary sporting artists. The art show will be hung at Morven Park in Leesburg over the Virginia Foxhound Show weekend in May of 2018.

The art show will happily coincide with Hark Forward, the MFHA-sponsored international foxhunting celebration also scheduled for next season. This initiative is the creation of newly-elected MFHA President Tony Leahy, who wishes to recapture the enthusiasm of all North American foxhunters, as did the MFHA-Centennial celebration season ten years ago. Tony’s committee has already been hard at work laying plans for regional joint meets, foxhound performance trials, and field hunter competitions for the 2017/2018 season.

Cross Gate Gallery (Lexington) has curated a one-man exhibition of paintings by renowned sporting artist Larry Dodd Wheeler at the Willcox Hotel in Aiken, SC. The Opening Reception was held on Feb 24, 2017, and the paintings will hang through April 14.

The Willcox Hotel is a popular Aiken meeting place for horsepeople of many disciplines---foxhunting, eventing, racing, and polo---and Larry Wheeler's art should find an enthusiastic audience there. Members and hunting visitors from the Aiken Hounds (SC), Whiskey Road Foxhounds (SC), Why Worry Hounds (SC), and Belle Meade Hunt (GA) are seen at the Willcox throughout the season for cocktails and dinner and especially on Hunt Nights (Tuesdays).

“As a child, I enjoyed watching the antics of foxes in the surrounding countryside,” says sculptor Carrie Quade. “I rode my ponies and horses in the farmland surrounding my home and also had the opportunity to ride with a local foxhunting group. In all my observations of foxes, the behaviors and attitudes were distinctive.

“While much of my bronze sculpture expresses some of my favorite animal personalities, my curiosity for new subjects, sculpture mediums, and Three-D technology has given me new inspiration for creating and casting sculpture.”

Portrait of Ellen Emmet c. 1907 by Mary Foote (American, 1847-1938).Ellen Gertrude Emmet Rand (1876-1941) was among the first females in the United States to succeed as a professional portrait artist. She was a contemporary of Mary Foote who painted this portrait of Rand at her easel.

A superb portraitist, Rand is perhaps best known for painting Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s official presidential portrait in 1934, one of hundreds of portraits of politicians, captains of industry, socialites, artists, and scholars completed over her forty-year career...as well as foxhunters of note! You see, she was a foxhunter, too.

Michael Lyne (British 1912-1989), DRAWN BLANK, Watercolor, gouache, 17 x 23-3/4, $7,000 to $10,000

For American art lovers, the upcoming Sporting Art Auction on Monday, November 21, 2016, 4:00 pm, at the Keeneland Sales Pavilion should be of special interest. Several lots by contemporary American and European artists feature North American hunts. Two in particular of the Old Dominion Hounds (VA) were painted by the late Peter Biegel (British) in the latter part of the twentieth century. Click to view the catalog.

This annual auction combines the expertise of two renowned institutions: Keeneland, the world’s largest Thoroughbred auction house and Gregg Ladd's premier Gross Gate Gallery, both located in Lexington, Kentucky. The 2016 collection features 175 high-quality lots of paintings and sculpture from renowned masters as well as talented new artists. In the foxhunting genre alone, there are works by Peter Biegel, Julie Chapman, Richard DuPont, John Emms, Dede Gold, Harry Hall, Juli Kirk, J.B. Lalanne, Michael Lyne, LeRoy Nieman, Andre Pater, Belinda Sillars, Susie Whitcombe, and George Wright.

Portrait of Harry La Montagne on a Grey, by Sir Alfred James Munnings

A 1920s work by famed equestrian artist Sir Alfred Munnings is estimated to fetch between $300,000 and $500,000 when it goes under the hammer at Christie’s in New York later this month. Titled, Portrait of Harry La Montagne on a Grey, the painting will be auctioned on October 26 during Christie’s sale of 19th Century European Art.

Munnings stayed with Harry and Beatrice La Montagne at their house, the Villa Regina in Pau, southern France, during the autumn of 1923 to paint Mrs. La Montagne’s portrait on horseback. This followed a recommendation to Munnings from Baron Robert Rothschild who described her as “a good-looking, smart, American woman. The well-turned-out lady was supplied by her devoted husband with superb horses.” (Sir A.J. Munnings, The Second Burst, Bungay, 1951, p. 100).

Look no further than Foxhunting Life’s Bookstore for a collection of Beth Carlson’s fox paintings in coffee-table book format. Each full-page painting—many in private collections and reproduced in full color on substantial, coated paper stock—is accompanied by a short essay by the artist explaining its history.

Reviewing Fox Tales for us last February, Martha Woodham wrote, "It’s not often that art lovers get to spend time with an artist to learn about the background of a painting, to discover insights into the thinking behind the work. But a lovely new book by Beth Carlson is like a walk through a gallery of her paintings with the Maine artist as your guide.”

Fox Tales: Beth Carlson’s Art, Dog & Horse Fine Art, LLC, 2015, hard bound, color, 32 pages, $39.00, available from the publisher

Book Review by Martha Woodham

It’s not often that art lovers get to spend time with an artist to learn about the background of a painting, to discover insights into the thinking behind the work. But a lovely new book by artist Beth Carlson is like a walk through a gallery of her paintings with the Maine artist as your guide.

In Fox Tales: Beth Carlson’s Art, the artist has used her paintbrush to capture her encounters with foxes over the years. Each full-page painting—many in private collections and reproduced in full color on substantial, coated paper stock—is accompanied by a short essay by the artist explaining the history of each artwork.

Juli Kirk (American, born 1957), Hounds on Scent, oil on canvas, 24" x 36", signed, dated 2015. Click on any of the images for a larger view.

Through the kind permission of Greg Ladd, owner of the Cross Gate Gallery in Lexington, KY, Foxhunting Life is proud to report, along with a selection of riveting images, on the highly successful third annual Sporting Art Auction at the Keeneland Sales Pavilion held there on November 18, 2015. Racing and shooting sports were also well represented.

Each year, Ladd travels across the United States and Europe to acquire important works worthy of the attention of a discriminating clientele. Eighty-nine percent of all the works offered were sold, and thirty-seven percent sold for more than the high-end estimates. Sir Alfred Munnings’ signed and dated painting of the champion French Thoroughbred, Mon Talisman, brought the top price of $250,500. At the other end of the spectrum, a lovely hunting gouache of a Worcestershire Foxhounds scene sold for just $3,450.