Paintings and drawings by Anne Bullen to go on display

Hundreds of paintings and drawings by Anne Bullen – illustrator of best-selling pony books and founder of Catherston Stud – are to go on display, after being rediscovered by one of her daughters.

Olympic dressage rider Jennie Loriston-Clarke found the cache, of more than 400 pictures, in an old desk she had inherited from her parents.

“They are so lifelike,” Jennie told H&H. “She seems to get the movements so beautifully, and she knew the anatomy so well.”

Mrs Bullen was a prolific equestrian artist, illustrating books by Monica Dickens and the Pullein-Thompson sisters. Her output was all the more remarkable, given that, alongside her breeding and showing work, she was also the mother of six children.

Jane (now Holderness-Roddam) and Michael Bullen also represented Britain at the Olympics.

“She would go out and draw somebody’s horse, then overnight, it would become an oil painting,” said Jennie.

“I don’t think she slept much.”

Some of the pictures will be for sale, but some particularly precious works will be reproduced as photographs for the exhibition.

“There is the front cover of [her book] Ponycraft, which is actually a picture of me on Royal Show, a very good pony of his day, who won at the Royal International,” said Jennie.

“It was sold to an American who bought a lot of our ponies, but eventually her great-niece offered it to me,” said Jennie.”It’s one that I’ll never sell.”

Anne Bullen’s pictures will be at the Osborne Studio Gallery, 2 Motcomb Street, London SW1, from 18 September-4 October.

This news story was first published in the current issue of H&H (10 May 2012)

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