Cheltenham 2022 – Post-Mortem on Days 1 and 2 and Day 3 Preview

 

 Well Day 1 and Day 2 were disappointing, verging on disastrous for me. Kilcruit got placed in the Supremem as predicted but my major fancy Dysart Dynamo fell – though he was never going to beat Constitution Hill.  Teahupo ran a stinker in the Champion Hurdle, finishing last – trainer blamed the going. The biggest disappointments were Indefatigable, challenging and going well when he fell two out in the Mare’s Hurdle. I’d backed him at 40-1. A bitter pill that. Worse was to follow in the Ballymore next day. I had a series of chunky each way bets on Journey with Me who fell at the last when certain to be placed – but not going to win. I recovered a few bob on Plan of Attack ew at 25-1 in Tiger Roll’s race and got out with a win on the very generously priced Facile Vega in the last. I thought he’d start at odds on but drifted out to 15-8.

 

I’m only going to bet on two races on day three – both staying hurdles. Sire du Berlais (see image above) has been laid out for the Pertemps final at 2.10 and though carrying top weight he has an amateur jockey claiming seven pounds and should be placed at least. I also like Third Wind at 18-1 in this although his form this year is less than convincing. I’m relying on his previous course form to work the oracle and he’s lightly raced this year.

 

The Stayers Hurdle looks very open and I’m not convinced Floating Porter is a good thing as generally predicted. Klassical Dream could easily come back after his hugely disappointing last run and I will have a saver on him. However I think the best trail was run by Royal Kahala who loves the ground, beat Klassical Dream easily last time out in the Galmoy at Gowran, and gets the seven pounds mare’s allowance. She should surely be placed at least. My only worry is that the great Tom Segal (Pricewise) has tipped her also and so her price will be shorter than I anticipated. She’s around 6-1 at present.

 

Cheltenham 2022 – Day 1 and Day 2 Preview

 DAY 1

 

The Supreme Novices’ Hurdle:

Day 1 is, as always, my favourite day with the Supreme to start with and the Champion Hurdle later. Normally I’d have my mind made up weeks ago on the Supreme but this year I’m still pondering it – and the defection of Sir Gerhard has only marginally improved things.  I think Dysart Dynamo’s outstanding performance at Punchestown was the best trial but will a front-runner like him be able to hold on in a race like this? The Brits are very keen on Nicky Hnederson’s Constitution Hill who could arrive late and do the business. But I’m not sure he beat much in his races and Henderson’s stable is in stinking form. Both of these are around 5-2 and so not betting propositions for me anyway. I’ve backed Kilcruit each way at 13-2. He has impressive course form (always a major factor) unlike almost all of the others but it’s disturbing that he was beaten at odds on in his first two hurdling ventures. He finally won his maiden by a street and I think it’s unlikely he’ll be outside the first three. Given all Willie Mullins’ options it’s significant that he runs at all. So I’m thinking a Mullins one two to start the Festival. 

The Arkle Novices’ Chase

 

The Brits are  hot for Edwardstown in this and he’s certainly run a few impressive trials. Blue Lord looks the best of Mullins’ runners but he’s hardly a world beater and he and Elliott’s Rivere D’Etel are closely matched. I’m looking for value elsewhere and so will try a few bob each way on Henry De Bromhead’s Magic Daze – currently 14-1.

 

The Ultima Chase

 

I usually give these handicap chases a miss but I like the course form of Kim Bailey’s Does he Know and so may be tempted when the lure of being involved overcomes my good sense. 

  

The Champion Hurdle

 

Of course we all want Honeysuckle to win and it seems likely that she will. The opposition seems sub-standard this year with only Appreciate looking dangerous. He’s not for me at 7-2 without a previous run this year so I’m looking elsewhere. All Gordon Elliott’s horse will be well primed and I fancy Teahupoo at 10-1 should be placed at least. He’s a young up and comer and he hammered Cheltenham winner Quilixios in the Red Mills at Gowran last month.

 

The Mare’s Hurdle

 

I think this is one of the trickiest races on the first day and could make cases for four or five. I won on Telemesomething Girl last year in the Mare’s Novice’s but won’t be tempted by the current 7-2. An outsider like Paul Hennessy’s Heaven Help Us (12-1) or my old favourite Indefatigable (25-1) seem better options.

 

Boodles Juvenile

 

They tell me Gaelic Warrior is a certainty but who knows with a bunch of 4-y-o handicap hurdlers. 

It’s way too complex a puzzle. 

 

 

National Hunt Challenge Cup 

 

No interest except I’d like to see Rebecca Curtis back amongst the winners with Pats Fancy but I suspect Mullins or Elliott may prevail.

 

DAY 2

 

Ballymore Novice’s Hurdle

 

With all the hype over Sir Gerhard (4/6) you’d imagine this is a foregone conclusion. He’s pretty much the same horse as Kilcruit who was beaten easily by Journey with Me (see image above) at Leopardstown in December. I’d much prefer to back Journey with Me each way at 7-1.

 

 

Brown Advisory Novice’s Chase 

 

I didn’t get where I am today backing horses in novice chases. Let’s move on.

 

 

Coral Cup

 

Conversely I do love a handicap hurdle with lots of place offers and open betting. Paul Nichols’ McFabulous is a class above most of these and so carries more weight also. At 16-1 he’s a smashing each way bet unless he gets caught in traffic. Nicky Henderson’s Call Me Lord at 33-1 is dangerously well handicapped and I’ll have a few bob on him also. What a nice dual forecast that would be.

 

Queen Mother Champion Chase 

 

One to watch. Shishkin and Energumene had a thrilling encounter last time out which may affect them. One’s eye strays to the fallen hero Envoi Allen at 25-1. Surely not?

 

Glenfarclas Chase

 

It’s all about Tiger Roll.  I’ll just watch – Delta Work may make it a one two for Elliott.

 

No interest in the last two races – a handicap chase and the bumper which is usually won by Willie Mullins.

 

 

 

Irish Art at Auction in 2021

An edited version of this piece appears on the Irish Arts Review Website.

 Twenty Twenty-one was a very good year for Irish art at auction both here and in the UK as buyers emerged from the their Covid cocoons. The easing of restrictions on physical viewing, the pent-up demand and most significantly the high volume of available funds through lack of spending opportunities all payed a part. A significant number of artists, both living and dead, achieved record prices. 

 

The dominant figures again in terms of hammer prices were Paul Henry and Jack B. Yeats, with William Orpen, Sean Scully and John Lavery also prominent. In the UK auction houses, Barry Flanagan achieved a series of spectacular results with Thinker on Rock topping them (£780,000 at Christie’s) . William Scott had a quieter year than usual due perhaps to the paucity of major works consigned. His pears however proved popular with his two best results being for Five Pears (£150,000 at Bonham’s) and Pear Study (£130,000 at Christie’s).

 

The highest price for an Irish work of art at auction in 2021 was the €1,400,000 paid at Whyte’s in November for Shouting, a late period Jack B. Yeats’ painting. It features three figures who appear to be drunkenly carousing – perhaps after a night of revelry. At 101.6 x 152.4 cms it is one of the largest paintings completed by the artist. While various publications claimed this as a world record for Yeats, this is not quite true. It equals the world record for the painter at an Irish auction house. The artist’s Reverie sold for exactly the same price (at Whyte’s in association with Christie’s) in 2019. And, due to the vagaries of the exchange rate between Sterling and the Euro, the £1,120,000 (€1,700,000) hammer price for The Wild Ones at Sotheby’s in 1999 remains the record price for a Yeats. In an auspicious year for the artist (the 150^th centenary of his birth) he supplied six of the top ten best-selling works sold at Irish auction houses in 2021.

 

A surprising addition to the very select list of Irish artists who have exceeded €500,000 at auction was the little known John Fergus O’Hea. To say that he is a rare figure at auction is to overstate his presence. He has been non-existent up to July of this year when Christie’s sold the Barney Eastwood collection. Amidst works by Alfred Munnings and Jack B. Yeats lurked Punchestown Races, a rare oil painting by the Cork-born political cartoonist. Despite being condemned as “an out and out nationalist” by the British press, O’Hea made a living from his cartoon work in both Ireland and England. This painting  is a fine historical record of the colourful crowd attending the racecourse in 1868. It was estimated at £100,000 to £150,000 but finally went under the hammer at £560,000. One suspects that some very deep pockets associated with the Irish racing scene may have been competing. 

 

Amongst those achieving record prices for their work in 2021 was Grace Henry - long and unfairly seen as a satellite around her erstwhile husband Paul Henry, with whom she spent a mere 20 of her 85 years. Grace was a considerable talent in her own right with a style more infused with European influences than Paul. Her painting The Fortune Teller on offer with a modest estimate of €5,000 to €7,000 sold at Whyte’s for a handsome €37,000. Another female artist, Katherine MacCausland, who has also largely travelled under the radar, equalled her record price of €30,000 at Adam’s in March. MacCausland was born in Dublin but spent the bulk of her artistic career in France where she moved in circles that included Gauguin and Roderic O’Conor. Although much influenced by Impressionism, this work was painted in the Realist style. Another record-breaker was Harry Clarke whose exquisite stained-glass work Bluebeard’s Last Wife sold for €165,000 at Adam’s in March. This was double the best price previously achieved by Clarke.

 

 

After the Yeats painting the next highest price at auction was for John Lavery’s The Terrace, Cap d’Ail. This study of gracious living on the Cote D’Azur also came from the Barney Eastwood collection at Christie’s in July. It sold for £950,000 after guiding at £400,000 to £600,000.

 

The results for Dan O’Neill in 2021 continued to disappoint. His best price was the €40,000 paid at Adam’s for Looking West. Apart from the €125,000 paid for Summer at Morgan O’Driscoll in 2020 he has never recaptured the heady days from 2005 to 2008 where he regularly commanded substantial six-figure sums.

 

There were striking results for two of our contemporary artists. Cian McLoughlin was invited to consign a work by Sotheby’s for its Irish Art auction in November. He submitted Eruption, one of his crowd paintings, full of energy and colour. It guided at £12,000 to £18,000 and sold for £42,000 – by some way his best price at auction. John Shinnors’ Scarecrow Heads attracted a lot of attention at De Veres’ June auction. The work consisted of 18 individual canvases, each measuring 91 x 91 cms. Although many felt that each individual piece could stand on its own, the artist insisted that they be sold as a unit and not broken up. To this end the wily Limerick man had only signed the last  of the 18 pieces. For those of a speculative nature the €70,000 to €100,000 estimate must have been tempting. In the end the lot went for €125,000, comfortably surpassing his previous best of €70,000. Donald Teskey continued to be much in demand, and his recurring crashing waves over rocks motif proved especially popular. His highest prices were the €40,000 paid for Coastal Report III at De Veres in November and €38,000 for The Tempest at Morgan O’Driscoll.

 

The most startling rise at auction in recent years amongst living Irish artists has been that of Genieve Figgis. However, her works are largely confined to auction houses in New York and Hong Kong.  Born in Dublin in 1972, she attended Gorey School of Art in 2006 as a mature student. She first emerged on the auction scene in 2019 when her Birth of Venus sold at Philip’s in Hong Kong for an extraordinary €220,000 (HKD 1,900,000). She continued to achieve spectacular six-figure results in 2021 for her highly-coloured, Ensoresque paintings. Her best result was $190,000 for Victoria and Albert (The Royal Family) at Christie’s in New York. On this side of the world she achieved £48,000 for Family Portrait at Bonham’s in April.

 

Auction coup of the year has to go to the individual who purchased William Orpen’s  After the Ball at Cobb’s Auctioneers in New Hampshire for $60,000 (€51,000) in August 2021. New Hampshire is a state where I suspect those conversant with the Irish art market are thin on the ground. The purchaser wasted no time in consigning the piece to De Veres where it sold for €310,000 in its Outstanding Irish Art auction in November. On the subject of Orpen I noticed that his Still Life of Mushrooms Falling from a Basket sold at Gardiner Houlgate in Corsham, a town near Bath, for €1,880. This seems an extraordinarily low price for an oil (40 x 60 cms) by one of our most celebrated artists. Shop around folks.

 

 

Cultural Manoeuvres In Trieste

On the road again. Myself and three friends took off for Treviso last week on a half-full Ryanair flight. Our plan was to spend a night in Venice and then head for Trieste by train to embark on a Joycean pilgrimage – visiting as many of the locations he touched as was feasible in three days. The team was well balanced: two could speak Italian, three were reasonably conversant with Joyce’s life and works, and one of us had gone to a lot of trouble to plan an itinerary. 

 

The stop off in Venice was a good idea. We stayed in a fancy hotel (Hotel Papadopoli Venezia)

 in the Santa Croce area by the Tolentini Canal – close to the train station for Trieste. The city was almost deserted so after a belt-busting dinner (plus aperitifs, digestifs etc.) we enjoyed an idyllic moonlit stroll around the quiet streets and waterways. And so to bed. The two-and-a-half-hour train journey to Trieste next morning was scenically uninteresting (passing through fertile fruit-growing land and the Prosecco region) until you hit the Adriatic Coast about 30 minutes out from Trieste. The train station was a twenty-minute hike from our hotel (Savoia Ecelsior Palace) but as we all travelled lightly it allowed us to stretch our legs and enjoy the walk along the seafront. 

 

We had timed our trip to coincide with the centenary of the publication of Ulysses but we encountered little evidence of this event being celebrated, or indeed of the fact that Joyce had lived for a considerable period in the city. There were plenty of posters however for a Monet exhibition. The first, and only obvious, indication of Joyce’s presence was a bronze statue by the Trieste-born sculptor Nino Spagnoli on the bridge at Via Roma in the centre of the city. It’s a mediocre work and a poor likeness. It depicts a life-size Joyce looking across the bridge to the building in which the Berlioz School where he first worked was located. A photo opportunity at best. 

 

Our efforts to follow Joyce’s trail on the first day were somewhat compromised by my travelling companions insistence on having a big fat lunch – involving three bottles of wine. After lunch we were good for little except some desultory wandering about (the modest Roman forum caught the eye), followed by a brief snooze. And then on to aperitifs (Negronis of course) and dinner.  (

 

On Saturday we got down to the serious business – starting with breakfast in Joyce’s favourite Pirona café, virtually untouched since his time. We had freshly squeezed orange juice (hand-cranked as we watched), croissants filled with pistachio cream and delicious coffee – followed by some kind of Italian gur cake, heavy on the figs. Every fixture, fitting, and item of food is visual perfection in this establishment – right down to tiles at the entrance. It’s a must from any visitor to Trieste – Joycean or no. 

 

After breakfast we headed to the Joyce Museum. This is not easy to find (on Via Madonna del Mare) – there seems to be no signage to guide you and it involves steep hills and patience. You may be rewarded by the sight of the Arch of Richard, a 1^st Century Roman monument on the way. The museum is a beautifully maintained couple of rooms on the first floor of an old prison. One room is dedicated to Joyce’s old buddy Svevo and the other to Joyce. In truth there’s not much to see – a life-size cardboard cut out of the young Joyce (another photo opportunity) and lots of books on shelves behind glass doors. There’s a 15-minute video on Joyce and Svevo that the rather weird and I suspect unwell attendant (tall, stooped, nervous) kept insisting we watch (we didn’t) and an Italian edition of Ulysses in a glass case that looked as if it had been defaced by the local Dadaist. 

Then, thanks to our Joyce planner, we had arranged a guided visit around the Anglican Cemetery where Stanislaus Joyce was buried – in a plot that also contained members of the wealthy Lichtensteiger family into which he married. He had contacted the Joyce Museum who put us in touch with a Dr. Giuliano Nadrah. He managed the cemetery and kindly agreed to meet us there. A tall, elderly figure dressed in a stylish dark coat with a smart fedora atop. He was the most amiable and helpful of gentlemen and proved an enthusiastic guide to his beautifully-maintained domain. He was attended by two of his workers who stood in the background and rather creepily shadowed us as we walked around. They had apparently cleaned up the grave pending our visit – a nice touch. One of them it turned out was a transplanted Glaswegian who came to Italy 20 years ago and stayed to work there. His English seemed to have been eroded by time – but the Glasgow accent still lingered. A story there I suspect. Aside from the Joycean relevance, the cemetery with its hill-top location, impressive tombs and multitude of striking cypress trees is worth a visit. Two of our team brought flowers and laid them on the grave - our homage to the man that carried his brother financially for so many years and enabled him to indulge his genius. A convenient bus stop nearby took us back to the centre.

 

For lunch we headed to the Stella Polare Café (yes we did a lot of eating) where Joyce used to come with his fellow workers from the Berliz school. This spot is more suited to lounging about for a while than the smaller Pirona – which has only outdoor seating.  We settled for modest fare here – delicious sandwiches and sundry savoury stuff.  Joyce maintained that the cafés in Rome were much inferior to those in Trieste and the Pirona and the Stella Polare prove his point. 

 

After lunch we planned to watch the Ireland/Wales match in some suitable bar but found to our chagrin that nowhere was showing it. This was surprising when you consider that nearby Treviso is one of the main rugby-playing areas in Italy. Sadly, and anti-climactically, we had to return to our hotel and watch it in an empty lobby on our largest laptop. We ordered beer and had good fun anyway - seeing Wales getting hammered at rugby outranks most cultural experiences.

 

On the final day (a Sunday) we emulated Joyce by attending a 10 o’clock service at the Greek Orthodox Church of Saint Nicholas on the seafront. This was a rare treat. The church was unusual for me in that it had a wall, richly decorated in gold and silver, with two entrances separating the nave from the altar (the technical term for this is an iconostasis and is apparently common in Eastern churches). There were candles everywhere and much toing and froing with them throughout the ceremony  – lighting them, passing them to the celebrants, quenching them and generally carrying on with them non-stop. There was an impressive live choir on the go throughout and the priest who interacted with them had a great voice for the job. And he had an array of gorgeous costumes – including a change of head-dress for the finale. He came and went theatrically between the nave and  his position at the altar behind the wall. He’d emerge, strut his stuff, and then go back in to conduct some hidden rite. The congregation of about a 100 mostly stood – or wandered about lighting candles. There was a huge amount of bowing and making the sign of the cross – almost non-stop. And of course much play with incense – the priest shaking it about with gay abandon. Why can’t our church services be such fun? I’d certainly make a comeback if they went for this model. The plate was passed around much to my cashless embarrassment and at the end kids went up to take sweets from a plate held by one of the satellite celebrants. Great stuff.

 

Trieste is a pleasant and uncluttered city to walk around – with handsome buildings and wide squares part of its Austro-Hungarian heritage.  It has a comfortable bourgeois feel to it – no begging or overt signs of poverty. Apparently its economy is no longer based on its deep-sea port but rather on its reputation as a major research location with an inordinate number of international organisations based there. I saw no evidence of any tourists apart from ourselves – not even a fellow-Joycean. We were blessed with mild weather the whole time we were there and only a brief spit or two of rain. There were any number of good-quality, modestly priced restaurants – mostly Italian food but we also found a couple of German-style places with bench seats and hearty plates of meat and sausage – accompanied by that godawful sauerkraut. The best of the many restaurants we sampled was the modestly-priced Restaurant Giustina Gianfranco on the Via Felice Venezian. It was run by a young couple who had spent time in Dublin and spoke excellent English. At night the populace, or at least the younger element, took to the streets. There was modest drinking and much chatting and moving around. I didn’t see a single drunk or ever feel unsafe even in the narrow back streets. The people were unfailingly friendly and I’d certainly recommend it to anyone who fancies a break away from the frenzy of Venice. Especially when summer comes and you can swim in the very accessible Adriatic.

If we wanted a more wide-ranging literary pilgrimage we should not have missed a trip to see Duino Castle nearby where Rilke wrote his Elegies and where Dante is alleged to have written some lines for his Divine Comedy. We also skipped the spectacular Miramar Castle which so impressed Ibsen. 

I should mention that I put on 2.5  kilos in four days.

 

 

 

John Kelly’s Think and Thank Garden in West Cork

An edited version of this article appeared in the Times Ireland on Christmas Eve - 175 years after N.M. Cummins’  letter was published in the Times of London.

 

On this day in 1846, at the height of the Great Famine, a letter addressed to the Duke of Wellington was published in the Times of London alerting an indifferent British public to the scale of the disaster, especially in the West Cork region. Earlier in the year, the Duke had written a singularly unsympathetic letter to a clergyman in Armagh (the Rev. H.P. Disney) claiming that as Commander-in-Chief of the Army he had no control over measures to be adopted for the relief of the distress. Go ask the Lord Lieutenant was his conclusion. As the Duke and the British ruling classes tucked into their kedgeree on Christmas Eve, they were presented with a graphic vision from within the Empire of what starvation and its attendant fever entailed. The author of this chastening missive was N. M. Cummins, a Justice of the Peace for West Cork. He gave witness to the horrors he witnessed when he visited homes in South Reen on the eastern side of Castlehaven Bay, near Skibbereen: “In the first, six famished and ghastly skeletons, to all appearances dead, were huddled in a corner on some filthy straw, their sole covering what seemed a ragged horse cloth, their wretched legs hanging about , naked above the knees.”

 

John Kelly, an internationally successful Australian artist with familial links to Ireland, moved here in 2003. On an earlier exploratory visit, Kelly and his wife Christina Todesco-Kelly, also an artist, fell in love with a large property on the remote Reen Peninsula, near Union Hall. Having settled into his new home, Kelly began to explore the dark history of a region that had been the epicenter of the Great Hunger. He came upon Cummins’ letter through a neighbour, Ann Shaw, who had attended school with a descendant of the concerned Justice . While landscaping his property and seeding it with his sculpture (including his iconic Cow Up a Tree), Kelly determined to create a permanent monument to its tragic past using Cummins’ historic missive. 

 

Two notions informed Kelly’s concept and they both centered on Sir Henry Tate – founder of the original Tate Museum. Tate had been a grocer in Liverpool during the Famine period, owning a string of shops. While there is no direct evidence that he was one of the many British businesses importing foodstuffs from Ireland during the Famine, it is an established historical fact that such activity continued as people starved. Tate sold his grocery business and invested his money in buying the patent for sugar cubes and subsequently built his fortune (via slavery) by importing sugar from the West Indies. This fortune, coming from questionable sources, led to the philanthropy that built and stocked the Tate Gallery. (It’s not hard to see some parallels with the Sackler imbroglio today – although sugar is, of course, less addictive and less lethal than Oxycontin.) Another aspect of Kelly’s interest in the Tate was the absence of paintings in the museum that recorded the greatest cataclysm in Irish history. Irish artists painted to please their paymasters and there was a perception that, as art historian Catherine Marshall opined, “such work would not be acceptable to the establishment.” Kelly’s rationale for his creation is simple: “Cummins’s words painted the picture that the artists could or would not.”

 

Kelly built a scale model of the Tate Modern from a forty-foot container that he had previously used to ship art to the 2011 Gothenburg Biennale. His Gothenburg exhibit contained a copy of Cummins letter but he determined to locate a more lasting exhibit on his Reen property. He had the text etched on a limestone tablet and placed on the floor of his Tate model. This was accompanied by another stone tablet bearing an eye-witness account of the Famine’s horrors from a local doctor. The building also contains a large cast-iron pot from the Famine period that he discovered on his property. It bears the distinctive Phoenix symbol indicating that it was donated by the Quakers. Its presence acknowledges the exemplary role of this group during the Famine. The title of Kelly’s land sculpture is the Think and Thank Garden. This is an ironic take on the Tate family motto: Thincke and Thancke. As we settle down tomorrow to our Christmas dinners, let us think back to our less fortunate ancestors and give thanks, even in these blighted times, for our good fortune.

 

The Think and Thank  Garden will be open to the public in 2022 through various West Cork festivals. These include the Arts Festival (Uillinn),  the West Cork History Festival and the West Cork Garden Trail..

 

 

 John P. O’Sullivan

December 2021