Each week until the end of the year I’ll be giving you a behind-the-scenes look at one of my favorite paintings. These are paintings that are available for you to purchase unless otherwise noted.
I had horses as a kid, and I rode, but the kind of riding I did was generally country lanes or along the Erie Canal. My mare, Bess, had been trained to an English saddle and bit, so I rode her on an old hunt saddle. My gelding, Oscar, was trained to a Western saddle, so I rode him Western with a curb bit. Our third horse, Capricious, was too much for me, so I rode him as little as I could. I did do my first jump on him. It was inadvertent. I didn’t see the ditch, he did, and he flew over it beautifully.
I took enough riding lessons that my parents were pretty sure I wouldn’t fall off. After that they left me to get on with it. There was little style to my riding. I had no special clothes or boots. Our horses weren’t shod because we never rode on the road. In fact, much of their lives were spent turned out in our old orchard, where they’d get drunk every fall on rotting fruit.
As an avid reader of British literature, I always loved the idea of the hunt. However, the closest I ever got to it were the hunter-jumper classes at the Niagara County Fair. In field hunting, the riders are dressed with formal elegance, there’s a pack of baying hounds, and the horses are beautiful, muscular and brave. I always imagined them streaming along tree-lines and taking fences at a full gallop.
So when I had the chance to paint near the historic Radnor Hunt in Malvern, PA, I was thrilled. I would paint the landscape and when the horses appeared I would somehow limn them into my composition.
Few things have been more of a let-down. It was a weekday, so the riders were in ratcatcher, which is a nice enough combination of tweed and tan, but hardly the pinks (which are actually scarlet coats) or black-and-white of a formal hunt. I first spotted the riders as they picked their way slowly down a far hillside and crossed the road towards me. You can see them in my painting as little marks, if you look carefully.
The hounds didn’t seem particularly motivated to start with, and they promptly lost the scent (if they’d ever had it in the first place). Riders and horses trotted around aimlessly, a few taking soft jumps over a drainage ditch, while the huntsman tried his darndest to get the dogs organized. As the false starts dragged on, most riders pulled up in groups of two or three and chatted. Their horses cropped grass. Eventually it was apparent even to me that the subject of the hunt had outfoxed the dogs. They turned and headed back up the hill from whence they had come.
It was hardly a scene from one of Anthony Trollope‘s novels, but I did get a cracking good painting out of it.
Autumn Farm, Evening Blues is 12X16. $1449 includes shipping and handling in continental US. It’s a bargain compared to what a good hunter will cost you, and you won’t have feed, vet or farrier bills. Click here to purchase online.
Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025:
- Canyon Color for the Painter, Sedona, AZ, March 10-14, 2025
- Advanced Plein Air Painting, Rockport, ME, July 7-11, 2025.
- Sea and Sky at Acadia National Park, August 3-8, 2025.
- Find Your Authentic Voice in Plein Air, Berkshires, MA, August 11-15, 2025.
- Immersive In-Person Fall Workshop, Rockport, ME, October 6-10, 2025.
While the hounds may have been in pursuit of a real fox, more likely they were tracking fox scent that had been laid down by someone earlier in the morning. And the riders were probably already a bit tipsy because when you’re fox hunting the rules about not drinking before 5 pm are completely out the door, so socializing is the primary objective.
In this instance they were trailing a fox. The riders had ample time to chat with me while nothing happened. And I don’t think anyone seemed tipsy, although a cold fall evening does seem to call for a libation.