
Leo Webster
Senior Specialist
£5,000 - £7,000
Senior Specialist
Sale Coordinator
Provenance
The artist; thence by descent to the present owner.
Richard Ansdell executed a series of sporting pictures such as this one, featuring different types of dogs bearing various game. They sold very well during his lifetime and were much sought-after for gentlemen's gun or smoking rooms.
This painting is different in that it depicts a black Water Spaniel with a curly coat rather than the more usual brown or liver and white coated dog. English Water Spaniels are now considered extinct, however this may in fact be an Irish Water Spaniel with its longer legs and distinctive curly topknot. The eyes of this dog are beautifully depicted showing confident intelligence in retrieving the game and the nose is realistically moist. Typical of Ansdell is the gentle portrayal of a gundog at work without the sensationalism of any type of brutality.
The Spaniel has retrieved both hen and cock pheasant with delicacy for the sportsman against an approaching storm coming over from the distant forest, giving the painting great dramatic effect. The birds themselves are exquisite in feathered detail. Ansdell was very adept at bird plumage, having depicted it from his early days when studying at the Liverpool Academy. The dead foliage and bracken suggest either Autumn or Winter – the pheasant shooting season being October to February. He has delighted over the foreground of this painting, and it is full of interest with an arrangement of spent cartridges and scattered feathers lying on the earthy ground next to a beautifully depicted game bag.
We are grateful to Sarah Dean for her assistance cataloguing this lot.