Fox Hunt

Henry Alken · n.d.

Medium

Watercolor, over graphite, heightened with traces of white gouache, on cream wove paper, laid down on gray wove paper

Original size

10.7 × 15.3 cm (4 1/4 × 6 1/16 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Neoclassicism

Fox Hunt captures the electric tension of the chase — riders and hounds moving as one across an open landscape, rendered with the fluid spontaneity that only watercolor allows. Henry Alken was Victorian England's pre-eminent chronicler of field sports, and his mastery lay in conveying motion and atmosphere with economical means. Here, graphite underdrawing anchors the composition while the watercolor washes breathe life into the scene; touches of white gouache lift the horses' flanks and the hounds' coats from the cream paper beneath. Alken understood horses and hunting from the inside — he was a horseman himself — and that intimacy shows in every gesture. His sporting prints were so widely reproduced during his lifetime that his style became shorthand for the English rural idyll, influencing generations of illustrators and painters on both sides of the Atlantic. This hand-painted oil reproduction translates the original's wit and movement into the richer, more tactile language of oil on canvas, preserving the spontaneity of Alken's draughtsmanship while giving the work a permanence and presence suited to any wall.