Art & Literature
The Old Blue-Pye
Here’s a traditional old hunting poem of unknown origin, probably often sung in the pub. I run across it every so often in the literature, and I don’t know why I never published it before in Foxhunting Life. I always enjoy it, especially the cocky, swagger of this tough old hound, as he describes himself to you.
Paving Paradise: A Review
Book Review by Dulany Noble, MFH
Paving Paradise, A Paradise Gap Novel by J. Harris Anderson, Blue Cardinal Press 2020, Paperbound, $17.95
What a fun read. And a fun ride! Paving Paradise is the third book in a series by J. Harris Anderson that takes place in the idyllic hunt country of Crutchfield County, Virginia. You do not have to read the first two books to enjoy this one, but it might take you a few chapters to keep all the characters straight.
On the plus side, having read this one, you will be on familiar terms with the characters―a bonus―when you decide to read the first two books, as I must now do.
Retrospective
Wendell Hawken / Matthew Klein photo
Introducing a new poem by the contemporary Poet Laureate of foxhunting.
When I rode,
I rode on a loose rein,
kept a good horse
The Outside of a Horse
Book Review by FHL
Ashmere Books, 2020, Steven D. Price, cover illustration by Ronnie Mutch, illustrated, color, softcover, 215 pages, $19.95. Click to purchase.
Writer, rider, raconteur Steven D. Price and I were making the long walk from an overflowing General Parking area to the Grand Prix jumper ring at the Upperville Colt and Pony Show.
We trudged slowly under a glaring mid-day sun on this June day. Steve was winding up a story—one from his trove of equestrian assignments during his days in the New York publishing business. Over those years he had the opportunity to meet, traveled with, and even ride with numerous world-famous equestrian personalities. This story was hilarious. He finished just as we set up our folding chairs on the hillside, and I blurted a suggestion that, as it turned out, he had heard before.
The Hunting Horn: What to Know and How to Know It
A Conversation with the Author, Grosvenor Merle-Smith
The Hunting Horn: What to Know and How to Know It, Grosvenor Merle-Smith, introduction by Tony Leahy, former president, MFHA, Dementi Milestone Publishing, 2021, hardcover, landscape, color, 8.5 x 11 inches, 288 pages, ISBN 978-1-7360885-5-5, $75.00. Order from the website, or contact via email.
Grosvenor Merle-Smith’s new book is a labor of love. Between its covers, you’ll find everything you ever wanted to know―even things you never knew you wanted to know―about hunting horns.
Your editor knows of no resource that compares to this meticulously researched, artistically designed, and lavishly produced book. The book’s title and cover design were heavily influenced, with the author’s tongue in his cheek, by an old pamphlet written by L.C. Cameron for Köhler and Sons, The Hunting Horn: What to Blow and How to Blow It. That pamphlet was the subject of a recent Foxhunting Life article. For any foxhunting library, these two publications―Merle-Smith’s and Cameron’s―constitute the sum and substance of just about all that's known concerning the hunting horn, its history, materials, manufacture, sources, and music used in hunting the fox with hounds.
The Country Life of an Artist
“The Country Life of an Artist: How Christmas Cards Tell My Story,” Anita Baarns, Dog Branch Publishing LLC, 2020, 205 pages, 281 works of art, spot gloss varnished, hardcover in Full Sierra cloth, 11-1/4 x 8-3/4, $67.80 (tax included).
Christmas cards help tell the story of an artist’s life.
Review by Norman Fine
Talented animal artist Anita Baarns has produced an intriguing and intimate book about her art and how art relates to her very self. Richly made and oversized in a landscape format to better display the artwork, her book is filled with examples rendered in pencil, charcoal, ink, pastel, watercolor, oil, and...yes...even crayon. In it she shows and tells a story of discovering, appreciating, experimenting, and continually developing her own talents and techniques as an artist.
The Closing of a Literary Institution: An Opportunity for Readers and Collectors
Robin Bledsoe, bookseller, at right with customers...two members of the mounted police force...in the backyard of her bookshop in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Robin
As I close my bookshop and open a new chapter in my bookselling career, Norm has asked me to say a few words about my almost half century of selling horse books.
Ever since I received Somebody’s Pony for Christmas 1952, I’ve cherished and collected horse books. After earning an M.A. in art history and starting a publishing career, I began selling out-of-print books in my two fields of interest, horses and art. I named the business Blue Rider Books after a group of German artists who often painted horses. I found some books in nearby book barns, ran some classified ads, mailed out a list, and so it all began—100-plus catalogues, dozens of trade fairs and horse shows, and tens of thousands of books ago.
Bound to the Country by Jim Graham
Book Review by Norman Fine
Bound to the Country: 30 Years of Photographing Mr. Stewart’s Cheshire Foxhounds, photographs and text by Jim Graham, Brilliant Graphics, 2020, hardbound, 10-1/4 x 12-1/2, color, casebound, cloth, 100lb matte fine art paper, 196 pages with a gatefold, duotone and four-color with 400 line hybrid screening, $75.00 Click here for a video preview; click here to purchase.
This long-awaited, lushly-produced, oversized book of photographic art, Bound to the Country: 30 Years of Photographing Mr. Stewart’s Cheshire Foxhounds by Jim Graham, is available for purchase.
This is not just a book about the Cheshire, and it is not just a book about Chester County’s pretty landscape. It is a magnificent work of the photographer’s art. It is a book inspired by a unique sporting community precariously situated between the suburbs of Wilmington and Philadelphia. For more than a hundred years this community has been zealously preserved by people of character who desired to live out their own vision of family life, a vision not left to the local Board of Commerce. You must see Jim Graham’s portraiture of these individuals. The images stun me. Character and soul are not easily captured in photographs.
Sporting Art Auction 2020 at Keeneland
Lot 9, Joseph Maiden (British, 1813 - 1843), WARE HORSE, Oil on board, 10-1/2" x 12", Signed, Inscribed en verso, $4,000 - 6,000
Sunday, November 22, 2020 will mark the eighth 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.
Bids may be made online or by phone for works by highly regarded artists at estimated prices as low as $1,000—a charcoal sketch by Munnings, for example. The hammer will fall on many lovely hunting paintings in the $3,000 to $10,000 range. At the more rarified altitudes, an Andrew Wyeth painting might bring six figures, and several of LeRoy Neiman's works are offered, one of which will surely fetch six figures. Be sure to see them when the online catalog becomes available.
The Fantastic Mr. Jorrocks
“Unting is all that's worth living for — all time is lost wot is not spent in 'unting — it is like the hair we breathe — if we have it not we die — it's the sport of kings, the image of war without its guilt, and only five-and-twenty percent of its danger."
—JorrocksJohn Mills, Mr. Jorrocks statue, Croydon. UK
As someone who, prior to 2012, had limited knowledge of sporting literature, art, and artists, I had absolutely no idea who Mr. Jorrocks was. In March 2020, right before the pandemic stopped the world, the National Sporting Library & Museum received a generous bequest from Mrs. Katrina Becker, a faithful friend of the museum for many years. Included in this gift was a portrait of a man with a cheery expression on his face. He made me laugh, and I asked our Head Curator Claudia Pfeiffer, “Who is that?!”
