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Faultsigned A. F. Tait and dated N.Y. 1851, 1.1. - - oil on canvas36 x 50 in. (91.5 x 127 cm.)LITERATUREW. H. Cadbury and H. F. Marsh, Arthur Fitzwilliam Tait: Artist in the Adirondacks, Newark, 1986, pp. 28-29; p. 118, no. 51.16RELATED LITERATUREW. H. Cadbury, "Arthur F. Tait", American Frontier Life, Fort Worth, 1987, pp. 109-15The present painting is almost certainly Tait's entry to the 1851 annual exhibition at the Boston Atheneum, titled Prairie Scene (Discovering an Indian Trail), and is one of the earliest, if not the first, in the series of western subjects that Tait executed over the course of the next ten years. Tait's proficiency in depicting the great American frontier was ironic, given that he never traveled west of Chicago, and his interest in this subject was influenced by a number of disparate factors.Tait's fascination with western life may have been sparked as early as 1840-42, when, as a youth in London, he claimed to have worked for Catlin's Indian Gallery as part of one of his Tableaux Vivants of Englishmen, painted and costumed as Indians, that sang, danced, and "war-whooped" for visitors. Tait's own personal enchantment and identification with frontier life is evidenced by a photograph of the artist, carrying a Kentucky Flintlock, in the same fringed buckskin tunic and beaded puckertoe moccasins that the figures in Trappers Following a Trail wear.In his search for subject matter, Tait was fortunate to have a friend in the painter William Tylee Ranney, who had traveled to the plains and Texas in the 1830s, and whose studio was filled with "animals; guns, pistols... curious saddles and primitive riding gear..." and all the other props that were necessary to create the romantic verisimilitude that Tait strove for in his western paintings.More prosaically, the shrewd businessman in Tait may have simply seen the commercial possiblities of a western series. Although not well received by the critics, one of whom described a similar picture as an example of "a style of painting that is becoming painfully conspicuous in our exhibitions... of which glaring red shirts, buckskin breeches, and a very coarse prairie grass are the essential ingredients", western subjects were enormously popular with the general public, whose interest had been rekindled by the Gold Rush of "49. Of Tait's twenty-two known western paintings, thirteen are compositions that exist in more than one version, and eight of these were published by Nathanial Currier or Currier & Ives as folio prints.Trappers Following a Trail: At Fault is one of two versions of the subject that Tait is known to have painted. The second dated 1852, and titled Trappers at Fault, Looking for the Trail, is now in the collection of the Denver Museum of Art.The subject is listed in Tait's record book as [no.] 9 Trappers Following a Trail (At Fault). Purchaser Jno. Osborn Esq. New York [crossed out] Chas. A. Davis [written in pencil above]: Size 50 x 36 Price received 100. Trappers at Fault, Looking for the Trail, owned by John Osborn, was one of six paintings by Tait included in the National Academy of Design Annual in 1852. Tait may have decided to send the 1851 version to the Boston Atheneum to gain more professional exposure, as 1852 was the first year he was invited to exhibit with the National Academy.The histories of both pictures are incomplete, and it is unclear whether these references are to the present painting or the Denver Musum version. Nos. 10 and 11 in Tait's record book are also both trapper subjects, one of which is dated 1851, suggesting that the present picture may be the recorded version. However, Tait did not begin his record books until 1856. Previous entries were done from memory, and Tait himself may have been confused about which title and sales history pertained to which painting. The first version might have been sold directly from the Boston show, and the second painted specifically to include in the National Academy exhibition. Alternatively, Osborn, who was both a patron of Tait and something of an amateur dealer, and who often purchased pictures from the artist and resold them to clients of his wine and spirits business, may have sold the first version to Charles Davis and commissioned the second as a replacement.Although similar in composition, differences between the two versions give each a unique mood and narrative sense. An additional horseman in the distance shifts the focus of the Denver painting to an apparent dispute between the trappers over the direction of the trail, supporting the interpretation of the picture as a buffalo hunting scene. In the present painting the trappers, and even their horses, listen intently, frozen in a moment of shared alertness to the presence of an unseen enemy that the original title implies. In a marked departure from his later, more anecdotal western paintings, Tait uses the isolation of the figures in the landscape to evoke both the vastness of the prairie, and its potential for hidden danger.