Foxhunting- Clearing a Ditch

Half of a set, and the record proves it

This register holds two works by this painter whose titles begin with the same word, Foxhunting, followed by a dash and a different phase of the day: one encourages hounds, this one clears a ditch. Both are dated 1839 and both are recorded in the same collection. That is a set, and the catalogue shows it without anyone having to assert it. Sets matter here because they tell you what the pictures were for. A single hunting picture is a scene; a sequence of them is an account of a procedure, phase by phase, and the animal's job changes from one plate to the next.

What the record holds

The date of creation is 1839 and the location is the Yale Centre For British Art in New Haven, one of thirteen works in this register recorded there. No dimensions are given for this work. Romanticism is the style term and British the nationality attached to the painter. The categories are landscape, rural and Animal Art > Horse, and the measured colour family of the image is ochre.

The specific job named in the title

Clearing a ditch is the part of the hunt that separates the mounted field from everyone else. Foxhunting is pursuit across enclosed country, and enclosed country means obstacles; the horse is there because it can cross what a man on foot cannot. Of all the functions this register sorts by, this is the one where the animal's physical capability is the entire justification for its presence.