Washington Winter Show 2013

41 This page is sponsored by Frames by Rebecca No species of shooting requires the aid of good dogs more than grouse-shooting…The best dog, perhaps, for the moors is a well- bred pointer, not more than five years old, which has been well tutored, — young in years but a veteran in experience. 4 The mid-nineteenth century animal and sporting artist John Frederick Herring, Sr. (English, 1795–1865), captured the spirit of such a dog in his 1834 portrait of a pointer being honored by a second on the moors [Fig. 5]. An early breed, the pointer dates back to 1600s and was originally bred to point hares for greyhounds to course. Its tendency to point and retrieve all game made the pointer a natural companion for wing-shooting as the sport was adopted. The classic scene of a brace of pointers remained a popular subject for dog painters into the twentieth century as exemplified by the German-born American immigrant Edmund Henry Osthaus (1858–1928), who produced countless portraits of gun dogs and field-trial breeds from the 1880s until his death [fig. 6]. COACHING While shooting and angling were activities based on sporting enthusiasts’ interactions with their contemporary world, coaching arose as a sporting pursuit from a nostalgic desire to preserve the past. As a mode of transportation, coaching reached its heyday in the early 1800s. In England mail coach transportation reform was led by John Palmer when he urged Parliament to implement a more efficient service with armed guards, the cost of which would be defrayed by revenue from passengers desiring increased security and speed. In 1782 his personally funded experimental coach from London to Bristol completed the 120-mile journey in sixteen hours, proving his method could reduce travel time by more than half; the existing service took almost forty hours. Palmer was installed at the London post office to oversee the overhauling of the national mail system. By the early 1800s, this combined with improvements in the roads and the suspension systems of the coaches themselves made coaching through the countryside a mode of travel that was both comfortable and enjoyable. The mail coaches were supplied with a post horn, initially to serve as a traffic signal, but eventually were also used to entertain passengers [Fig. 7]: Most of the guards of the stage-coaches now make their entrance and exit to the tune of some old national ballad, which though it may not, perhaps, be played at present in such an exact time and tune as would satisfy the leader of the opera band, is yet pleasant in comparison to the unmeaning and discordant strains which formerly issued from the same quarter. 5 Fig. 5: John Frederick Herring, Sr. (English,1795–1865). Brace of Pointers on the Moor , 1834. Oil on canvas, 18 x 27 inches. On loan from Mrs. Jacqueline B. Mars.