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ARTHUR FITZWILLIAM TAIT (American 1819 - 1905)
Good Hunting Ground: The Home of the Deer, 1881-1882
Oil on canvas
20-1/2 x 30-1/2in.
Signed and dated lower left in red paint, A.F. Tait NA / NY 1882
Inscribed on the reverse (the artist's original inscription was transcribed onto the relined canvas), Good Hunting Ground / The Home of the Deer / Painted from Nature by / A.F. Tait NA / 1881 / Long Lake / Hamilton Co. / Adirondack's, NY

PROVENANCE:
Sold through a dealer in Utica, January 16, 1882, price $400 including frame, net to Tait $350;
Sold at Schenck's sale, April 2-3, 1883 for $190;
Newhouse Galleries, New York, NY, in 1986;
Mr. and Mrs. F. Howard Walsh, Fort Worth, Texas;
Walsh Family Art Trust

EXHIBITED:
National Academy of Design, New York, Special Autumn Exhibition, October 1882, titled "Early Summer, Home of the Deer, Adirondacks."

LITERATURE:
Listed in the artist's handwritten register of 1,557 oil paintings preserved in three ruled notebooks, "A Record of Paintings by A.F. Tait," in the library of the Adirondack Museum, Blue Mountain Lake, New York, no. 82.1, published (unillustrated) in Warder H. Cadbury, Arthur Fitzwilliam Tait. Artist of the Adirondacks, with a checklist of his works by Henry F. Marsh, Newark, London and Toronto, 1986, no. 82.1 as Newhouse Galleries, New York, p. 258.

In August of 1881, at the height of his career as one of America's foremost animal painters, Arthur Fitzwilliam Tait painted this dramatic scene of deer on Long Lake in the Adirondacks. According to the register of his works he kept over the course of his lifetime, Tait wrote that he had painted this scene "from Nature. Opposite Palmers (up the lake) looking into the Bay." It was the third and most extensive of the four versions of the same general composition the artist had produced late in 1881 and early in 1882 (nos. 82.2, 81.26 and 81.27, the latter a work now in the collection of The Adirondack Museum in Blue Mountain Lake, New York). It most closely resembles a slightly smaller version of the subject (no. 82.2 in the register and 1986 catalogue raisonné), which differs in the arrangement of the deer and the design of the background. In this painting, he allowed more light to fall upon the deer, and placed them closer to the foreground plane. He also created an extensive screen of carefully articulated pine trees in the background as a foil to the deer. Tait clearly considered this painting an especially successful effort, for he submitted it for inclusion in the special Autumn exhibition of the National Academy of Design in 1882.