Scarteen Country, Cromhill, looking towards the Galtee Mountains

The Scarteen hunt country lies in Limerick and Tipperary, adjoining the Duhallow. Edwards describes the area in Reminiscenes of a Sporting Artist, 'It is a bank and ditch country, distinctly big in parts; but they are good, sound, safe banks....The Scarteen pack has been in the Ryan family for over two hundred years, and originally hunted hare before Christmas and carted deer after, the hunt uniform being then dark grey. Later they hunted fox and deer and since the 1914-18 war only fox, changing their uniform to red with a tan collar....The pack is composed of pure-bred Kerry beagles, not the least like a beagle and twenty-two to twenty-three inches high!' (London, 1947, pp. 131-2). Edwards was inspired by his trips to Ireland not only as a horseman but also as an artist, 'As an artist, Irish country strikes one as of beauty unsurpassed...almost every rural scene in Ireland has beauty.' (op. cit., p. 77)

The same view is shown in a finished watercolor dated 1936 and entitled The Scarteen Black-and-Tans (J.N.P. Watson, Lionel Edwards, 1986, illustrated opposite p. 81). The character and ambience of his trips to Ireland are well distilled in his book My Irish Sketch Book, (1929) in which he concludes 'There is no doubt that Irish hunting has a potent charm. What fun it all is!' (op. cit., p. 79).