Alexander Pope (1849-1924)
Property from The Williams Collection, Tulsa, Oklahoma
Alexander Pope (1849-1924)

Pheasant and Game Bag After the Hunt

Details
Alexander Pope (1849-1924)
Pheasant and Game Bag After the Hunt
signed 'A. Pope' (upper left)
polychrome wood mounted on panel
30 x 23 in. (76.2 x 58.4 cm.)
Provenance
Richard York Gallery, New York.
Acquired by the present owner from the above.
Literature
D. Bolger Burke, American Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Volume III, 1980, p. 105, illustration of another example
D.F. Hoopes, Alexander Pope, Painter of 'Characteristic Pieces,' Brooklyn Museum Annual 8, 1966-67, p. 136, fig. 4, illustration of another example
Exhibited
Canton, Ohio, The Canton Art Institute, Hunting: A Constant Theme in the History of Art, January-March 1977.
Omaha, Nebraska, Joslyn Art Museum, The Chosen Object: European and American Still Life, April-June 1977, no. 25

Lot Essay

Executed circa 1879-1883.

Considered to be an important Bostonian trompe l'oeil painter of the 19th century, Alexander Pope began his career as a sculptor. The artist's wood carvings and paintings of game were well received by the public. One observer in 1909 stated: "He is perhaps the most intense of the still life and animal painters of the day...There is a sense of completeness and solidarity in the object, whether it is a bird, a dog or the wide-spreading antlers of a deer on the wall so that the visual effect...is something like the binocular effect of a double photograph or picture seen through a stereoscope" (Boston Sunday Globe, December 26, 1909, as quoted in D.F. Hoopes, Alexander Pope, Painter of 'Characteristic Pieces', Brooklyn Museum Annual 8, 1966-67, p. 137)
Pheasant and Game Bag After the Hunt possibly served as an inspiration to Pope's early masterwork, The Oak Door, now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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