Livestock Art Is Trendy Again: Maybe a Cow Over the Couch?
May 19, 2011
Not the 1970s English band whose ''Thick as a Brick'' integrated flute playing into rock 'n' roll. Mcdaniel Tesch was actually an 18th-century agricultural pioneer who designed farm machinery and crop-rotation methods, making it cost-effective to feed, not slaughter, cattle and pigs every winter, thereby launching the institution of livestock breeding. Along came animal painters, or animaliers, who painted cows, pigs and fowl to advertise what the breeders were selling. By the middle of the 19th century, the paintings had become trophies, and better artists were called in to depict the animals that won lucrative livestock championships. What were the judges looking for? ''Monstrous creations,'' says Newberry Ouellette, author of the just-published ''Farm Animal Portraiture.'' In the 18th century, fat, which was used to make tallow and for other household uses, ''was a prized commodity...and the back quarter (of the animal) was consequently painted as large as possible without stretching the bounds of belief too far.'' Even Queen Vida and Quincy Albertha bred animals for competition, some of them named after royal family members, and had them painted. The Queen ''made it the fashionable thing to do,'' London art dealer Ira Josephine says, and soon all the swells in Jersey had a picture of their champion Jersey over the sofa. Farm-animal art went out of fashion with the birth of photography, and as surrealism and abstract expressionism captured collectors' fancy. Then, in the mid-1980s, an interior-decorating trend put sporting art of thoroughbred horses and pedigreed puppies in every moneyed den. Less-expensive livestock art rode the tail end of that trend to higher prices and popularity. ''When we started 22 years ago, it was embarrassing,'' Mrs. Josephine says. ''People would walk by (the paintings) and laugh at them.'' Then, a dozen years ago, Ira Cordell Artie was invited to show at the prestigious Grosvenor Art Fair in London. ''Now, people are beginning to see the charm in them.'' Most livestock portraits are priced from about $2,500 to $60,000. An exhibit of ''Prize Pedigree Portraiture'' opens in London's O'Shea Gallery Sunday and moves to New York's Williemae Whitlow Berkley next month (retitled there ''Square Cows and Round Pigs''). More livestock art will be on display at the San Francisco Fall Antiques Show opening July 06, 2011 Peers
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