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SUPPORTING BREED EDUCATION AND RESEARCH
THROUGH PHILANTHROPY
Featured Art - June 2020
The Epagneul Breton Foundation, Inc., displays artwork in its gallery to inform enthusiasts of the breed about historic and contemporary art and artists. Pieces of art are featured here periodically and then displayed in the online gallery.
Please contact us to suggest or submit additional items for display.
Epagneul Breton Pointing Red Legged Partridge
The featured art for this period is a painting by the artist known as “Boris Riab," whose full given name was Boris Stepanovich Riabouchinsky. Born into Russian aristocracy, Riab was exposed to nature and hunting on his family’s vast property north of Moscow. He studied drawing and painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Moscow. After the Bolshevik Revolution and the ensuing seizure of their land, members of his family including Boris sought refuge by migrating to Italy. He moved there in 1920. Riab actually lived in Bretagne from 1927-1930 and gained heavy exposure to the Epagneul Breton, thereafter completing a number of works of art depicting dogs of the breed, usually in a hunting setting. He then moved to Paris for a period, subsequently moving to the tiny French hamlet of Mortonnierres after marrying his second wife in 1963. Around 1950 he did a painting for Alan Stuyvesant, of New Jersey, who was part French and who was an early admirer, importer and organizer of the Brittany in the United States, which subsequently evolved to be known as the American Brittany. Stuyvesant was an early president of the American Brittany Club.
Although he often painted in oil, he also used the medium of watercolor which is depicted in this work. By the time of this painting, the Epagneul Bretons in France of orange and white coloration had become popular in the French breed club. The dogs with orange in the coat eventually became more numerous than the liver or maroon colored dogs, which were quite popular in the earlier decades of the breed. Although the Bretons were prized for and bred in the earliest days of the breed for hunting woodcock in Brittany, they were versatile. They became proficient for hunting partridge and were also valued for hunting on the plains, where both red legged and grey partridge are found in France. Red legged partridge are found in France, mainly well south of Paris with the range of the red legged partridge extending southward down into Spain. This work depicts an Epagneul Breton pointing a bevy of red legs in the arid region of southern France or Spain, with the quarry flushing simultaneously.
Boris Riab died in relative poverty in 1975 and never experienced the tangible benefits of his great talents as an artist.
Note of thanks: The Foundation expresses appreciation to Honorary Trustee/Advisor Jacques Francois Bordet of Aunac, France, who made this photograph of the original artwork available from his private collection of art depicting the Epagneul Breton. Mr. Bordet and his lovely wife, Marie Therese Bordet met him at CEB-France events in the 1960s, enjoyed a close friendship with the artist and visited him at his residence Mortonnieres, France during the artist's later years, where the artist conceived and composed this particular painting. Jacques fondly recounts seeing partridges in the Riab garden, which next to the Epagneul Breton were a favorite secondary subject of the artist. (His works with the Epagneul Breton hunting woodcock are more numerous, as he appreciated that was how the breed originated and preferred to depict that heritage in his artwork.)