Art & Literature
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.
Equine Art Exhibit to Benefit Connecticut Cancer Foundation
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.
Martha Doyle (Condensed)
Martha Doyle illustration by Edwin Megargee
Permit me, Muse, to sing the praises of Martha Doyle, a great lady in her own right and the noblest hunter I have ever seen or known. If I ever did see a better, I would not admit it, for that would be disloyalty to Martha’s memory and I am the High Priest of her cult. Many admire her, a certain few revered her greatness, but I adored her. She had my heart and perhaps, in a grudging, spinsterish, slightly contemptuous way, I had hers. You give your heart, I believe, to only one woman, one countryside, one horse, and one dog.
The Sporting Life: The Art of Joseph H. Sulkowski
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.
Foxhunting Art Show and Sale To Brighten Morven Park
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.
The Year of the Hound: Showcasing the Foxhunts of Virginia
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 Classic Style of Carol Lee Thompson
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.
To Finish the Season
Blowing Home at Warrenton / Douglas Lees photo
‘Saddleford Crossroads at half-past eleven,’
Only last month, it would seem, we were there,
Rising so early to get there by seven,
Rubbing our hands in the chill morning air.
Time must have flown by, for that was September.
Horses half fit, and the country quite blind,
Details of every run since, we remember,
Sorrows and joys of each day call to mind.
