Poloiana

Little horses, nervy and debonair, clipping the turf with pointed hoofs, mallets whacking, riders shouldering, wheeling, while young Royalty looks on. At Meadow Brook, the background is grass; at the Wanamaker Art Gallery, Manhattan, it is canvas. An exhibit of Poloiana has opened there. A wooden pony, smartly blanketed, stands at the end of the gallery--a silent symbol of the stable. The room is rigged with saddles, flags, balls, mallets; scenes of the game and portraits of dead and living players cover the walls. A painted Prince, losing in the work of St. Helier Lander something of the incipient puffiness that sits upon the living one, gazes mildly down. Sporting scenes, because they contain balanced movement, a living impulse of clean speed, have always attracted artists. Degas, for instance, cultivated the paddock almost as assiduously as he did the salle de ballet. He is represented in this exhibit by a pencil study of a horse. There is Middleton Manigault's modernistic painting of an International match; a series of Robert W. Chanler's decorations on Polo Through the Ages; George Wright's Grooming Polo Ponies; two water colors by Ivester Lloyd of a game in full tilt; spirited etchings by Morshead and George Soper.