Yale Center for British Art, Given by Paul Mellon in memory of his friend James Cox Brady, Yale College, Class of 1929
Copyright Status:
Public Domain
Accession Number:
B1976.7.87
Gallery Label:
The third, climactic episode captures the moment when a shot—possibly the first of the day—is fired, leaving a ghostly cloud of smoke in the air. On the far right of the canvas the dead partridge falls upside down from the sky, as the hounds hasten to meet it. The light of the afternoon is beginning to dim, and dark clouds are making their way across the sky. The verses that accompanied William Woollett’s engraving after Stubbs suggest that it was the change of weather in the afternoon that brought the quarry into relief against the sky for the huntsmen, making possible a clear shot: “A Gentle Gale that blows along the land / The Game betrays.” Gallery label for installation of YCBA collection, 2016