A good judge of character

THE TIMES WE LIVED IN:IRISH SUMMERS. DON'T you just love them? Rain and more rain. Wellies and brollies. Sodden festival-goers in muddy fields. Once you get indoors and get dry again, though, it's the characters you remember, rather than the weather – especially when you peer back, through photographs, into summers past.

The Dublin Horse Show has had its fair share of characters over the years. Take this one, decanted on to a shooting stick at an improbably jaunty angle, bowler hat in hand, pipe in mouth, a broad smile on his aquiline face and his left hand raised in . . . what? The thumb-and-first-finger circle that denotes “perfection“? All the better for whoever or whatever he’s judging if that’s the case – though he may, of course, just have an eyelash in his eye.

Come to think of it, he has something in his eye all right: a glint that suggests a zest for life. It fairly zooms out of the picture. To be fair, the fact that the sun is shining helps the mood. As does the photographer’s skill in capturing the play of light on that weather-beaten face.

The judge’s formal attire harks back to another era. There was a time when showjumping was an all-male affair – ladies were not allowed to enter “leaping” competitions at the RDS until 1919 – as well as the preoccupation of a privileged social class.

These days, everyone is welcome at the show – which this year starts a week later than usual on August 15th – with a plethora of family activities going on around and between the equine events which are still at its heart. Even the word “judging” has taken on a much wider meaning, with the RDS student art awards and the National Craft Competition becoming part of the mix. As to whether this year’s show will produce a Dublin character for summers future to remember with fondness, well, we’ll just have to wait and see.

Arminta Wallace

[ Irishtimes.com/archive ]

Published on August 3rd,1977 photograph by Peter Thursfield