Pig production.

I was born on a small pig farm in the Cotswolds but left for the Mull of Kintyre at barely two years of age. When just a toddler my brother and myself managed to open all the doors to the pig stys, not satisfied with allowing all the Wessex saddle back sows and their piglets to mingle in the outer yard we then let out the boar. When we were discovered my father dragged us back to the house and in the kitchen declared to my mother that “Your children have let all the pigs out”. Given that the pigs were seriously large beasts our safety might have been called into question but with my father the farm animals took priority.

Forty years on I painted his prize winning Wessex saddleback pig that took first in 1955 Smithfield show. Shortly afterwards a series of pigs followed during the preparation for a primitive farm animal exhibition.

Now my attention has once again been drawn back to pigs with a commission to stitch a pig. Commissions are something that in the past I have fought shy of since the requests are seldom of interest but a pig that’s different. I decided on a large white boar and to treat the subject very much as a naïve 19^th century animal portrait.

 

The Large White originates from Yorkshire and played an important part as a crossing pig in today’s bacon production having characteristics of long and deep sides of good quality as well as deep wide hams. It has a slightly dished face with broad snout; the long ears are thin, slightly inclined forward and fringed with fine hair.   

Having completed the Large White Boar I wanted to see what effect a stump work pig on tweed would make and so started stitching a Gloucester Old Spot sow. I then read that this breed did not just come in black spots on a white ground. 

The Gloucester Old Spots throughout its long history has been bred on utility lines with the sole idea of producing the finest quality bacon in the most profitable manner. The pig proved a particular favourite with bacon curers, mainly owing to the large amount of lean meat in comparison to fat; the bacon is streaky and of first rate quality. By the beginning of the twentieth century its fame had spread throughout the world and in 1919 at the Royal Agricultural Show in Cardiff a boar was sold for 600 guineas. The characteristics of a champion is to have a medium length head; wide between the ears, a wide but medium sized nose with rather long and drooping ears; the neck fairly long and muscular with the sides very deep and presenting a rather drooping bottom line; the belly and flank, full and thick with the tail set high of moderate size and carrying a strong brush. The skin colour should be white spots on black ground, or black spots on white ground with hair long and silky with an absence of mane bristles.