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Articles by Sporting Arts
Cranach the Elder’s Confusing Hunt Scenes
Deer Hunt of Elector Friedrich the Wise, Vienna Or, More of the Same by Brooke Chilvers Until you read it, study it, or figure it out yourself: You are not losing your mind when, standing before a painting by Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472–1553) of a demure Adam and Eve, or an agonizing Lucretia pressing a dagger to her breast, or a sober portrait of the artist’s friend Martin Luther, you are totally convinced you’ve seen this work before. Why?
Why Every Museum, and Most Castles, Has Its Cranach
Adam and Eve, Courtauld Institute of Art, London by Brooke Chilvers Having missed out on childhood Bible stories in favor of the Sunday children’s choir in the chapel at St. Bart’s with my best friend Anne, most of what I learned about saints and martyrs, whether Saint Catherine’s beheading or Saint Barbara’s execution by her pagan father, was through paintings at the MET Museum by Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472–1553).
The Worst Week of the Year
The Attributes of Music (1770), Anne Vallayer-Coster, Louvre Or, mourning music, movies, and fine fare by Brooke Chilvers I can’t complain.
Who Is Chardin? - Gray's Sporting Journal
Blowing Bubbles, MET by Brooke Chilvers Jean-Siméon Chardin (1699–1779) is one of those 18th century French artists whose name always rings a bell among folks who even only occasionally visit museums. In fact, because of his reputed limited creative reserves, he often made several versions of the same painting, so you can see his celebrated Soap Bubbles in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (MET) in NYC, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the National Gallery of Art (NGA) in Washington, DC.
Jean Siméon Chardin – Who He Is Not - Gray's Sporting Journal
Hare with Flask and Game Bag, Chardin (1728–30), Louvre, Paris by Brooke Chilvers Picture in your mind the artwork you associate with the Château de Versailles during the lives of King Louis XIV (1643–1715) and his mistresses, the Marquise de Montespan with whom he fathered seven children, then Madame de Maintenon, whom he married in secret after the death of his neglected wife; and of Louis XV (1715–1774) and his ladies, the style-setting Madame de Pompadour who died in 1764 at Versailles,...
The Making of a Ken Carlson Painting
"Polar Bear" — Ken Carlson by Brooke Chilvers For a sick boy stuck in bed for a year recovering from rheumatic fever, the artwork of Bob Kuhn in sporting magazines such as Field & Stream made the young Ken Carlson (b. 1937) determined to become a wildlife artist. By age fifteen, Ken was entering a drawing contest for a two-year scholarship for the correspondence course at the Art Instruction School in Minneapolis.
On Becoming Ken Carlson
Caribou Bull, 1992 by Brooke Chilvers If any number of wildlife artists were born within driving distance of the great museums of New York or Pittsburg – think Guy Coheleach and Stanley Meltzoff or Joseph Sulkowski and Lou Pasqua – finding early inspiration in masterpieces, such as Rosa Bonheur’s monumental The Horse Fair, this was not the case of Minnesota-born artist Ken Carlson (b. 1937), who saw his first major works only after leaving home.
The Order of the Elephant
The badge of the Danish Order of the Elephant. by Brooke Chilvers After a two-year battle with Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) over flight cancellations during the Covid era, we finally found ourselves in Copenhagen for a bright and cold long summer weekend. We planned our stay to be able to walk everywhere, except for a few friendly taxis to Tivoli Gardens and the airport.
I Went to the Cummer Museum of Art in Jacksonville
An Amethyst Hummingbird with a White Orchid, by Martin Johnson Heade by Brooke Chilvers This wasn’t the first time I’ve traveled far to see a painting—only to discover, when I got there, that it wasn’t on display. What a surprise, years ago, that not a single Carl Rungius painting from the Glenbow Museum’s book on the artist is included in the museum’s permanent collection, which I visited in the dead of a Calgary winter.
SEWE 2024: Been There! - Gray's Sporting Journal
C.D. Clarke, Osceolas by Brooke Chilvers You have to understand that I lived in Charleston—Isle of Palms, to be exact—in 1976. I worked a $2.30 an hour job at the still-existent Southeastern Galleries, and earned five times as much working the happy-hour shift at the long-gone White Horse Inn. Gas cost 59 cents a gallon, and I listened to Jackson Browne as I navigated my wounded-warrior boyfriend’s pickup across that scary outside lane of the windy old Cooper River Bridge.
Apokalupsis – An Uncovering: The Morris Museum Exhibition - Gray's Sporting Journal
Exhibition poster for Apokalupsis, An Uncovering by Brooke Chilvers Artist Joseph H. Sulkowski considers the works in his interactive, multi-media traveling exhibition, Apokalupsis – An Uncovering, as the magnum opus of his long career as a much appreciated sporting artist. The show, which marries oil paintings and sculpture, light, sound, and video, is on view from March 1 to April 28, 2024 at Augusta, Georgia’s Morris Museum of Art.
Adieu to an Artist: Bodo Meier - Gray's Sporting Journal
Bodo Meier, Zebra by Brooke Chilvers It’s terrible when a journeyman actor, after decades of hard work, suddenly snatches the perfect role at the perfect time and shoots to fame with a stream of Golden Globes, Screen Actors Guild Awards, and Emmys, only to unexpectedly expire at the very top of their game. Think Nancy Marchand (1928–2000) who played Livia Soprano, Tony’s impossible mother, for two seasons in the HBO series, The Sopranos.
A Guide to Stanley Meltzoff’s Gamefish - Gray's Sporting Journal
Stanley Meltzoff, Permit on the Flats by Brooke Chilvers When illustrator Stanley Meltzoff (1917-2006) was forced by changes in the 1960s publishing industry to re-invent himself as a painter of saltwater gamefish, the self-described “picture-maker” was already middle-aged. Thus, the artist and avid spearfisherman, who’d started diving with a mask and tanks in 1946, Meltzoff came to invent the genre of piscatorial underwater oceanic vistas that had great appeal to sports fishermen.
The Making of Stanley Meltzoff – Part I - Gray's Sporting Journal
Stanley Meltzoff, Sailfish (Flying Fishes) by Brooke Chilvers Saltwater gamefish artist Stanley Meltzoff (1917-2006), the inventor of piscatorial underwater oceanic vistas, turned to painting fish only in his middle age, and then only after color photography and new printing technologies had seriously encroached on the illustrator’s job as a creator of images for reproduction in widely read publications.
Legendary Professional Hunters I Have Known
Brooke with Legendary PH and husband, Rudy Lubin by Brooke Chilvers To raise money to support the African hunting safari industry, the African Professional Hunters Association (APHA) is conducting an online wine collection auction, A Tribute to the Legendary APHA PHs of Africa, January 10–14, 2024. Go to: www.africanpha.com/aphawine I already had a boyfriend—maybe three—when I met Rudy Lubin at a caviar dinner at a colleague’s Paris apartment in 1984.
The Color-Blind Artist, A.B. Frost
Frost’s Summer Woodcock, in full color. by Brooke Chilvers The innate inklings of art that swirled in the blood of American illustrator and artist A.B. Frost (1851–1928) found early expression in his simple but lively use of pen and ink on paper. As did his sense of humor, illustrating authors of comedy and satire, including Lewis Carroll, Mark Twain, and the creator of Uncle Remus and his circle, Joel Chandler Harris.
Collecting the Sporting Prints of A.B. Frost
Autumn Woodcock Shooting by Brooke Chilvers Luckily, there are still walls in public places—or at least in lawyers’ offices and executive boardrooms—suitable for sporting prints that depict, well, men with side-by-side shotguns and hunting dogs, on the threshold of pulling the trigger on nervous quail, shy rails and rabbits, grouse, geese, and such.
‘Twas the Night Before Thanksgiving 2023
Talk of the Town, by Walter Matia by Brooke Chilvers Thanksgiving 2022 in Illinois, with our traditional group of revelers who convened there most years, had been a Covid-stalked disaster, further tainted by generational disappointments. So, for Thanksgiving 2023, six of us decided to remove ourselves from good internet connections and family problems to our house in the woods in Virginia.
Peter Hofer’s “Jaguar” Double in .500 Nitro Express
Peter Hofer’s Jaguar Double in .500 Nitro Express by Brooke Chilvers In 1984, a handsome French professional hunter invited me to a remote town on the slopes of the Karawanken mountains in Carinthia, the Austrian province that borders Slovenia. “It’s called Ferlach,” said Pierre–of course he was named Pierre–omitting that it was home to such prestigious gunmakers as Ludwig Borovnik, Johann Fanzoj, Franz Sodia, Herbert Scheiring, and Josef Hambrusch.
The Roy Mason Effect on Sporting Art
"Three Mallards" by Roy Mason by Brooke Chilvers It feels wonderful to be washed over by Enlightenment, when the pieces of a kaleidoscopic cultural puzzle suddenly fit together in your mind. Like when you viscerally sense the connection between African masks and Picasso, or Kandinsky’s path from painting Bavarian landscapes to transcribing the universe. Understanding what came before as well as after is at the heart of such revelations.
On Safari with Wilhelm Kuhnert in Middleburg, Virginia - Gray's Sporting Journal
Elephants by Kuhnert (c. 1917), NMWA. by Brooke Chilvers If only I had known that, in the dead of winter 2018/2019, there was a major exhibition of Friedrich Wilhelm Kuhnert’s (1865–1926) work in Frankfurt, Germany, I would have pulled all my plugs to be there.
Carl Rungius, One of the “Big Four,” at the NSLM, Middleburg, Virginia
Elk, Near Fremont Peak (1903) by Brooke Chilvers It is always thrilling to see works by hard-to-find Carl Rungius (1869–1959). More than a dozen years ago, I was on the trail of the German-born American artist and traveled to Calgary, Alberta, in the dead of winter to visit the Glenbow Museum.
The Ever-Disappearing Roy M. Mason
Roy Martell Mason (1886–1972) by Brooke Chilvers I can think of no sadder words for an artist, whether living or dead, in an online reference “book” than “The page for such-and-such has been moved or removed.” Yet in spite of his popularity with the public and the impact of his work on a future generation of sporting artists, outdoor watercolorist Roy Martell Mason (1886–1972) has disappeared once again.
Shikar: Royal Hunts of the Mughal Empire. In Miniature - Gray's Sporting Journal
Shah Jahan introduced wearing green as camouflage. by Brooke Chilvers Copenhagen is home to several wonderful smaller museums that started as the private collections of wealthy, art-obsessed businessmen who then donated their treasures to the State of Denmark or City of Copenhagen. The Glyptotek, for example, began as the private sculpture collection of the son of the founder of Carlsberg Breweries.
Qamargah - Gray's Sporting Journal
Akbar’s “ring hunt,” or qamargah. by Brooke Chilvers We refer to the first six of 21 Muslim warrior rulers that dominated large parts of the Indian subcontinent after 1526 as the Great Mughals. Theirs is considered the golden age of Mughal culture that encompassed Persian, Indian, and European influences. These emperors kept extensive official chronicles that describe and illustrate everything around them, from endemic diseases to their acute observations of nature.
When Rosa Bonheur Met Buffalo Bill - Gray's Sporting Journal
Posted on July 27, 2023 - Art, Featured Artist, Sporting Arts Portrait of Col. William F. Cody (1889), by Rosa Bonheur by Brooke Chilvers That Picasso and Matisse knew each other, were even friends and often rivals, seems plausible enough. But that female animalier artist Rosa Bonheur (1822–1899)—the most commercially successful French artist of the 19th century—should meet up with the Hon. W. F. Cody (1846–1917) is certainly one of art history’s most unlikely encounters.
Montenegrin Revolvers?
The Montenegrin revolver is the only gun named for a country. by Brooke Chilvers Who knows when the idea of traveling to Montenegro entered my brain? Maybe while reading Les Aventures de Tintin, by Belgian comic-strip artist, Hergé (1907–1983). A half-dozen of his many titles, starting with King Ottokar’s Scepter (1938), take place in the tiny fictional East European monarchy of Syldavia, ruled by the benevolent King Muskar XII from his capital, Klow.
Five Babes, Five Birds
By John James Audubon (1785–1851) by Brooke Chilvers While my husband recalls his many years hunting lions and buffalo as a professional hunter in Africa, I cherish my single, all-American memory of a spring hunt for wild turkey in the Ozarks, with four other female outdoor writers. Which means we were five bitches, I mean babes, chasing five birds.
The Auberge in the Brittany Forest - Gray's Sporting Journal
Since 2015, The Auberge Ar Duen in Le Domaine de la Hardounais. by Brooke Chilvers In France, I am forever seeking out the remaining bits and pieces of authenticity that offer a window into its past. That combination of old stones and pleasing landscapes, with good tables serving local fare. An interesting church. Monuments to a lost generation of men worth contemplating. Splendid trees or wisteria, lilacs, old oaks, or whatever. Fields with happy cows and good-looking horses.
Renaissance Robotic Art – A Mechanical Galleon and Clock - Gray's Sporting Journal
This 14th c. manuscript shows a galleon as a banquet table centerpiece for kings. by Brooke Chilvers It’s likely my fascination with “automata,” or automatons, dates back to a New York City childhood where winter wonderlands were encased in the windows of Bloomingdale’s and Saks Fifth Avenue at Christmas. Reindeer pedaled the air in the snow and Santa’s workers pounded away, until someone pulled the plug. In fact, mechanical toys date back to the third century BC Han dynasty.
David Shepherd: And There Were Also Trains - Gray's Sporting Journal
On Shed – As We Remember Them in the Last Days of Steam. by Brooke Chilvers Artist David Shepherd (1931–2017) once said that he was attracted to all things “jumbo,” from elephants and airplanes to the steam locomotives whose reign in Great Britain came to an end in 1968 with the dieselization of British Rail. Most of us are familiar with Shepherd’s iconic images of regal wildlife, including the unlimited print, Wise Old Elephant, which sold hundreds of thousands of copies.
David Shepherd: Before Elephants, There Were Aircraft
Posted on April 6, 2023 - Art, Featured, Featured Artist, Sporting Arts In 1969, Shepherd painted Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother by Brooke Chilvers David Shepherd’s is a well-rehearsed life in its telling. The same tales oft repeated and all tracks covered; nothing further to expose.
Barye Bronzes to Visit the NSL&M in Middleburg, Virginia
Horse Surprised by a Lion, ca. 1850 by Brooke Chilvers I wish I could say the larger-than-life lions in front of Manhattan’s New York Public Library that I grew up with were sculpted by the great 19th century French animalier bronze sculptor, Antoine-Louis Barye (1795–1875).
Mayan Jaguar Kings – divided we fall… - Gray's Sporting Journal
The kings derived power from wearing jaguar pelts. by Brooke Chilvers With all I’ve learned in life, it seems I never knew that by the time the Spanish conquistadores set out to obliterate the Mayans, soon after Christopher Columbus’s younger brother first encountered—and looted—a Mayan trader’s canoe in 1502, its great urban populations had already crashed and dispersed by as much as 90 per cent. Scholars refer to this as Late Postclassic Maya, which says everything.
William Secord and Dogs in Art
Posted on February 28, 2023 - Art, Featured Artist, Sporting Arts Dog Painting (1840–1940), a social history of the dog in art. by Brooke Chilvers Finally, it’s happening. We are getting out of town in winter to go birdwatching in Belize. Cancelled earlier, due to my husband’s bum knee turning into surgery and a tedious recovery, there’s just Rudy and me with our driver/guide. We set the pace and don’t hold anyone up.
Abaco Colors, Abaco Light
Posted on February 20, 2023 - Art, Featured Artist, Sporting Arts "Scaffold Creek," study in oil, C.D. Clarke by Brooke Chilvers In winter, the hardwood forests of the Blue Ridge Mountains are dead gray. Out of every window, their straight bare tree trunks, unbroken by a single evergreen, might as well be prison bars. There’s not even snow this year to brighten the light. And leaving the outdoor Christmas decorations past January 31 somehow just ain’t right.
Stubbs & Gilpin – This Time, on Dogs - Gray's Sporting Journal
Two Greyhounds and a Mastiff belonging to the Duke of Hamilton, Sawrey Gilpin by Brooke Chilvers Thank goodness so many 18th century portraits of beloved thoroughbreds and hunting dogs are adequately labeled, allowing us to identify their subjects and their masters. Sawrey Gilpin named his 1780 painting simply Two Greyhounds and a Mastiff belonging to the Duke of Hamilton, referring to the reputedly handsome and dissipated Scottish peer, Douglas Hamilton, 8th Duke of Hamilton.
Sawrey Gilpin - Gray's Sporting Journal
Posted on January 18, 2023 - Art, Featured, Featured Artist, Sporting Arts Gulliver Addressing the Houyhnhnms by Brooke Chilvers It’s likely you have a greater inkling of British equine horse artist George Stubbs (1724–1806) than of his contemporary, Sawrey Gilpin (1733–1807), whose work is often restricted to rarely seen private collections that still elude the internet. The two most important equine artists of their time are often compared.
John Swan - Gray's Sporting Journal
John Swan, "Rangeley Boat" by Brooke Chilvers John Swan’s art often pays tribute to the world’s most beautiful fishing landscapes, from the Andes to remotest Russia, from the Bahamas to as far north as Gaspé. Hey, it’s part of the job! Yet he still finds inspiration in the harbors, bays, and rushing waterways of Maine. It’s in the artist’s blood. Not surprisingly, Swan (b.
Francis Lee Jaques in Black & White: Part II
Posted on December 7, 2022 - Art, Featured Artist, Sporting Arts Bison: Jaques illustrated his wife’s book, Snowshoe Country. by Brooke Chilvers Few artists can create a landscape not only on the flat surface of the canvas, but also on the confined curved walls of a natural history museum diorama, ingeniously recreating an entire three-dimensional panorama of everything above and below the horizon.
Rediscovering Francis Lee Jaques: Part I - Gray's Sporting Journal
Posted on November 22, 2022 - Art, Featured, Featured Artist, Sporting Arts Canvasbacks Gallery of North American Game by Brooke Chilvers As a child of midtown Manhattan, my first inklings of wild places were based on annual class trips to the hallowed halls of the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH).
Honoré Daumier on Anglers and Huntsmen
Posted on November 9, 2022 - Featured, Sporting Arts Hold Hare: Hello! My good man! How much for your hare? Four francs? I will give you five francs, but hold it up like that so I can shoot it.” by Brooke Chilvers For reasons I will never quite understand, my charming 26-year-old Florida niece set her heart on getting married in our (then) backyard in a little town in France along the l’Oise River in the Vallée des Impressionnistes.
In Love Again, with Kuhnert
"Growling Lions" is one of 500 Kuhnert paintings of lion. by Brooke Chilvers Each time we return to Tanzania – from 1994, when we were tasked with building a primitive safari camp in Tarangire Game Reserve, to our recent family photographic safari, where we were headache-free clients instead of stressed-out organizers – I fall in love all over again with German wildlife artist and hunter Friedrich Wilhelm Kuhnert (1865–1926).
Terrines, Tureens, and Strasbourg
Posted on August 29, 2022 - Art, Sporting Arts A Delft boar’s head terrine from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. by Brooke Chilvers There was a time when my husband did not to come home until he had “the bacon.” In those days, for my French hunter, this meant spending most of our autumn weekends in Picardy shooting snipe (bécassines) as guests in a hut (hutte) — actually a comfortable chalet with a full kitchen that was half-buried in the busy migratory marshes of the Baie de Somme.
Niagra Falls to the Andes, With Frederic Church
Posted on August 22, 2022 - Art, Featured Artist, Latest News, Sporting Arts The Icebergs (1861) by Brooke Chilvers American songwriter Marc Cohn, of “Walking in Memphis” fame, is likely the only singer/songwriter ever to have been both shot in the head (during a 2005 carjacking in Denver; he can still write and perform) and to have written a musical ode to landscape artist Frederic Edwin Church (1826-1900) and his spectacular Hudson River estate, Olana.
John Wootton - Gray's Sporting Journal
Posted on August 11, 2022 - Art, Featured Artist, Sporting Arts In 1715, Wootton painted "Bonny Black Held by a Groom" at Newmarket for 2nd Duke of Rutland’s Belvoir Castle. by Brooke Chilvers On the trail of Great Britain’s “father of sporting art” Few circumstances are more frustrating than reading about an interesting, even historically important, painting and not being able to pull up its image on the internet.
On the Road With the Unstoppable Albert Bierstadt
Posted on July 6, 2022 - Art, Featured Artist, Sporting Arts "Among the Sierra Nevada Montains" – Albert Bierstadt by Brooke Chilvers As a kid growing up in Manhattan, I went to nursery school down the street from where they were building the Guggenheim Museum. The Medieval Art, and Arms and Armor galleries of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (MET), were great for pubescent tickle tag.
On Safari with Grant Hacking
Posted on June 10, 2022 - Art, Big Game, Featured, Sporting Arts Big Five by Grant Hacking by Brooke Chilvers I wish I’d collected the T-shirts I’ve seen over the years of Africa’s Big Five species that picture an obviously Asian elephant and even a tiger. One, perhaps a leftover from the 1960s, included a bear, likely inspired from Bruno the Bear in the TV series Daktari, which takes place in an Americanized East Africa.
Spring Means Asparagus
Posted on May 17, 2022 - Art, Sporting Arts L’Asperge (1880) or A Sprig of Asparagus by Édouard Manet. by Brooke Chilvers As a child in the 1950s, I did not grow up with fresh asparagus. Or fresh mushrooms, red peppers, or eggplants, much less parsley. Even in New York City, other than the holdout two-block Sicilian neighborhood on First Avenue just north of the 59th Street Bridge, you had to go downtown to Little Italy for escarole or basil.
Joseph Sulkowski: Transforming a Painting Into a Sculpture
The three hounds in the “Apokalupsis” mural represent Love, Beauty and Joy. The Three Graces by Brooke Chilvers As the wife of a professional hunter, editor for many years of African Hunting Gazette, and art columnist for Gray’s Sporting Journal, I’ve attended my fair share of safari conventions.
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