Art & Literature
Conscious Riding
Book Review by Lori Brunnen
Conscious Riding: A Horseman’s Diary, Paul Striberry, Orange Publishing, Southern Pines, NC, 2016, soft cover $15.95, Kindle $9.95Even at the moment he came into the world, Paul Striberry found the ways of people mysterious. He was denied the usual exit route and made his appearance via Caesarean section, the anesthesia associated with which he suspects may have induced his short attention span and low frustration tolerance.
“Alice (mum) goes back to work, and leaves me in the care of Migraine Minerva, a nightmare nanny with a curious aversion to children. She feeds me when I’m not hungry and puts me to bed when I’m wide awake.”
“The horses are my round-the-clock companions. I watch them grazing in the sunshine and galloping through my dreams. They nip my boredom in the bud and fend off Minerva’s vexations. I’m happy with my four-legged friends on the wallpaper.”
The Lady Who Rides to Hounds
Anthony Trollope illustration by Spy in Vanity FairHunting Sketches by Anthony Trollope was published in 1865 and contained eight chapters, including "The Man Who Hunts and Doesn’t Like It," "The Man Who Hunts and Does Like It," and the six chapters that follow. Here is "The Lady Who Rides to Hounds" from this classic by Trollope.
Among those who hunt there are two classes of hunting people who always like it—hunting parsons and hunting ladies. That it should be so is natural enough. In the life and habits of parsons and ladies there is much that is antagonistic to hunting, and they who suppress this antagonism do so because they are Nimrods at heart. But the riding of these horsemen under difficulties, horsemen and horsewomen, leaves a strong impression on the casual observer of hunting; for to such an one it seems that the hardest riding is forthcoming exactly where no hard riding should be expected. On the present occasion I will, if you please, confine myself to the lady who rides to hounds, and will begin with an assertion, which will not be contradicted, that the number of such ladies is very much on the increase.
Tally Ho Palm Beach
Book Review by Lori Brunnen
Tally Ho Palm Beach, Paul Striberry, Orange Publishing, Southern Pines, NC, 2017, 228 pages, paperback ($15.95) and Kindle ($9.95)Real Estate agent Alice Pleasance Liddell literally “runs into” the local Palm Beach Hunt at the beginning of this oddly charming romp of a book. This chance encounter plunges Alice headfirst into the social whirl of the affluent, and not so affluent hunt members.
After meeting the Master’s gentle son Clayton she realizes the Hunt is deeply in debt to...well, everyone. All as a result of...wait for it...a Seminole curse. Amid hounds, hunting, and horses, Alice is determined to save both the hunt country and restore Everglades Hall. Oh, and reverse the Indian curse. All while awash in the whirl of hunt balls, races, and polo matches.
The Foxhunter’s Guide to Life and Love
Review by Lori Brunnen
The Foxhunter’s Guide to Life & Love by J. Harris Anderson, Blue Cardinal Press, Virginia, 2017, 216 pages, $16.95 (paperback) or $7.99 (e-book). Available from Amazon, tack shops, and booksellers.“Thumper” Billington IV, MFH of John Anderson’s fictional Montfair Hunt in Virginia, is back. This time we find Thumper rebounding from a failed impetuous marriage to a much younger woman, and embarking on a tentative and tender new romance. Thumper traverses the difficult geography of romance with somewhat more difficulty than he does the geography of the hunting field. Sometimes at a gallop, sometimes finding his progress thwarted by an unseen hazard, Thumper uses seven of his “Foxhunter’s Secrets” to navigate beyond the hunt field to a fulfilling relationship. Because, as difficult to accept as it is sometimes, there is life beyond hunting. Really.
Each of the seven secrets are presented by way of the story and summed up with a take-home tip. This “Tally-Ho Tip” is a tongue-in-cheek take-away lesson for those that need things short and sweet. In other words---men.
The Christmas Holidays
Foxhunting juniors with Mr. Stewart's Cheshire Foxhounds / Jim Graham photo
The children are home for the holidays now,
A gay little crowd and a sporting one too,
They go where the grown-ups go, careless of how
Their ponies get over, so long as they do.
Arrived at the meet they are wild to begin,
And can’t understand all the waste of good time
Spent drinking brown sherry or horrid sloe-gin,
And deem it a most unforgivable crime.
The Perfect Hat
Lionel Edwards illustrationThe Bowler and the Wide-Awake,
The Topper and the Straw,
The Homburg and the Helmet
May be hats without a flaw;
The Bonnet of the Highlanders,
The Busby of the Greys
Are hats we shall remember
To the end of all our days;
The Jockey-cap of sunlit silk,
The Bishop’s Shovel-black
Can honor a cathedral town
Or grace a racing track.
But the neatest, sweetest headgear
Be it e’er so crushed or crude
Is the Hat upon the Skyline
When a forward fox is viewed.
Fifth Annual Sporting Art Auction at Keeneland
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.
Artwork of Lisa Curry Mair: Unroll It, Hang It, or Lay It
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).
Sculpting With Paint: The Art of Brooke Major
"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.
Pensioned
From Scarlet Blue and Green: A Book of Sporting Verse by Duncan Fife, with Illustrations by Cecil Aldin, MacMillan and Company, London, 1932
I am Dan—ten years old, and a little bit blind—
But it doesn’t annoy me, for people, I find,
Seem to vie with each other in being most kind,
For I’m pensioned.
When the weather is wet and the wind blowing cold,
And the others troop out for their walk when they’re told,
I curl up in my chair by the fire, for I’m old—
And I’m pensioned.
