The Exmoor Society Archive holds many beautiful paintings by Hope Bourne. This is one of the larger watercolours and shows Prince, a Shire Gelding who she painted in 1946. The back of the frame includes a description written by Hope for ‘Milton and Shipton during the War’. The painting was donated to the Exmoor Society by Hermon and Pam Puddle of Milton under Wychwood in Oxfordshire, where Hope and her mother lived before her she moved to Exmoor .
“Perhaps the highlight of the show [the first Wychwood Horse Show, Oxfordshire in 1944, in aid of War Charities] was Prince, the jumping carthorse. Prince is a real feathered carthorse and a worker. But he happens to be a wonderful jumper and usually carries off the prizes in the open jumping at all the local shows, to the delight of the spectators with whom he is a great favourite.”
