Richard Ansdell R.A. 1815-1885

Richard Green;
Private Collection

Art Journal, 1855, p. 179

ENGRAVED:
by Frederick Stacpoole for Henry Graves & Co. in 1858

'This is a pendant to the "Scotch Gamekeeper," whom we find among his native hills; the man is posted to mark; he stands by a stile, and the landscape in which he is circumstanced is distinct from the other. He leans against a grassy bank, intently watching the sportsmen; he has with him a brace of pointers, the ardent and impatient expression of which cannot be too highly praised, - they have heard a shot and are full of excitement. The dogs cannot be excelled, and the dead game is most perfectly painted. We have become accustomed to see these things done with a sweeping brush, but the careful manipulation with which these animals and birds are represented is most appropriate to the surface to be described... It is an admirable production, not to be surpassed in this department of Art.' (Art Journal, 1855, p. 179)

The English Gamekeeper and its pendant picture The Scottish Gamekeeper are among Richard Ansdell's most celebrated and well-known paintings. The composition and subject was based upon paintings executed in the mid 1840s, entitled A Keeper and his Dogs of 1844 and Old Man Seated Beneath a Tree with his Hounds of 1847, which were painted in Ansdell's earlier, more naive style of his immature years.  By 1855, Ansdell's style had become far more sophisticated and his depiction of both human figures and animals and the landscape in which they are set, shows him at the height of his powers.

An adaptation of The English Gamekeeper entitled A Gamekeeper with Dogs was painted in 1869 (Sotheby's, 2 September 1998, lot 1175), whilst another was painted in 1874 entitled Outside the Cover (Sotheby's, 5 November 1997, lot 55).