- The names of those who buy this print will be inscribed on a master picture kept for posterity on Dartmoor
- Each of them will also be presented with a unique hoof and hand signature to remind them and thank them for their help.
This Dartmoor Pony Heritage Herd has been painted wild on the Moor. There are not many of them left as most of the ponies on the Moor are other breeds. Help them survive.
Every painting sold will raise money for their herd and each painting has a Certificate of Authenticity personally signed by a Heritage Pony and by the artist, Michael Lees.
Please purchase it before it is too late.
The Certificate of Authenticity, with hoof and hand, is one of the rarest on the fine art market.
Most of the ponies you see on Dartmoor will be cross bred as that makes commercial sense.
If you want to see a rare Heritage pony look for a beautifully proportioned pony like an elegant miniature horse. It looks kindly and has a constant colour and a long mane. In summer its coat is short and shiny, in winter darker and very shaggy.
The ponies roam wild on the Moor but are owned by farmers who have also been part of the pony’s wild management for thousands of years but who now have to run more commercially attractive stock on the Moor.
The Dartmoor Pony Heritage Trust is finding a commercial way forward for the Heritage Herd founded on their rough and tough bloodline and their hardiness.
There is a large print hanging in the Dartmoor Pony Heritage Trust. Everybody who buys a print will have their name added to the print and shown for future generations to see.
You will be part of living history in a way no other art work can make you. Your limited edition painting, with your Certificate, will be a family heirloom as it gains in value and as you hand it from generation to generation.
But your real heritage will be wild ponies living on Dartmoor as they done for thousands of years. An endangered species saved by you.
Every painting on this site is by Michael Lees whose first one man exhibition was at the home of horse racing, Newmarket, he sold all of the forty paintings. Since then his paintings normally sell for thousands of pounds before the paint is dry.
Every painting on this site has been painted by him. He lives in a wild part of Devon and sees the Pedigree Dartmoor ponies every day.
He wants the Heritage Herds to survive.
The art of Michael Lees is covering all the costs of this web site, production of the print and marketing in order to raise £8,000 for the Dartmoor Pony Heritage Trust to ensure the future of the tough and wild ponies of the Heritage Herd.
To find out about the price, the quality of the print, the rarity of the print and then to purchase it and thus secure the Heritage ponies future and your place in history please click here
Purchase this print whilst there is still time
A thousand years before the birth of Christ ponies moved across Dartmoor in their family herds and left their hoof prints in the mud. Three thousand years later the hoof prints were discovered by archaeologists.
The indigenous Dartmoor pony is rarer than the Giant Panda
Their numbers are at a "critical" level according to guidelines published by the Rare Breeds Survival Trust.
The wild ponies on Dartmoor are owned by famers who have a thousand year history of working with them.
Now, because of commercial and legal pressures, they find they have to run other breeds on the Moor and the 3000 year old breed is dying out.
The Dartmoor Pony Heritage Trust is developing a way forward that ensures the survival of the indigenous Dartmoor Pony and its future welfare.
They call the wild herds the Heritage Herds . Charlie stands in the painting in his wild Heritage Herd, follow his hoof prints........
Rollo is the nearest foal in the picture. He has 3000 years of history behind him, follow his hoof prints ......
Charlie and Rolo ask for your help by buying this print
For three thousand years the heritage herds have been on Dartmoor .........
They have defied King Henry VIII ......
They have formed the basis of the pedigree Dartmoor Pony......
Polo ponies were bred from them...
They are now more endangered than the Giant Panda.....
If you buy a print your name will be added to a master print and displayed to future generations. Your heritage will be......
- Your name remembered
- Endangered ponies survive
- A family heirloom
- Your family can see your role in history live on Dartmoor
- and.........
3000 ye ars of history will be coupled in future with your name via a master print on Dartmoor.
| The direct ancestors of those ponies still walk wild on Dartmoor and are leaving their hoof prints in mud. The difference is that the only trace of them left in a few years time may be just their hoof prints. |
| There are only a few hundred breeding mares left of the original, wild direct descendants of the ponies that walked the moors 3000 years ago. They are rarer than the Giant Panda – and getting rarer. |
The heritage stock is wild and tough. It thrives on barren, open windswept moorland and grazes under great dark granite crags. It has a blood line that is still used by pony breeds when their breed needs refreshing and toughening. |
It has lived with wild sheep who watch as the Heritage Herds pass into history. Those that are left in the Heritage Herds still walk wild on Dartmoor. Their ancestors were hidden from King Henry VIII who decreed every foal bred in England should be above 13 hands so it could be later used for military service. They founded the blood stock from which, with cross breeding, polo ponies were bred. Every child in America, England and Denmark who has a pedigree Dartmoor Pony owns a pony whose original blood line came from the Heritage Herds. |
| Michael on the Moor. His hands will help the herds survive. |
Michael, Dru Butterfield of the Dartmoor Pony Heritage Trust and Charlie and Rolo, both Heritage ponies, ask for your help. Please purchase the print |