Tait and his wife Marian arrived in New York in early September of 1850 from Liverpool, England. Although Tait had some business troubles soon after landing in New York, the early 1850s proved to be a very fortuitous time for him to begin a career in painting, particularly in light of the rapidly growing interest in sporting. 1851 also marked another early milestone in the artist's career, as the American Art Union, which was perhaps the largest purchaser of American paintings at the time, honored Tait by paying more than two hundred dollars for a pair of 1851 paintings, a deer's head, and Let Him Go a large hunting scene of 1851 that is also included in this sale.

These ambitious early paintings seem largely responsible for Tait's rapid assimilation and relative success in the trade of painting. As Bartlett Cowdrey suggests in "Arthur Fitzwilliam Tait, Master of the American Sporting Scene" (American Collector, New York, January 1945), the handful of sporting paintings that Tait executed in 1851 (including Duck Shooting, a Good Shot and uck Shooting, Some of the RIght Sort) helped him establish a reputation as one of the finest sporting painters in America, with Thomas Hewes Hinckley and William Tylee Ranney as his only rivals.

An anonymous critic of the day writing for The Evening Mirror, discussed Tait's early sporting paintings and concluded his remarks with the following:

Mr. Tait is a young Englishman, who has taken permanent lodgement among us, and his progress for two or three years past has been
very marked. He loves nature and hunts her out, with gun and
brush in hand....His eye is quick and correct; his view broad, and his hand, as an artist, accomplished and decided. His pictures are thoroughly American, and in his province he paints better
altogether than any of his competitors in this region." (The
Evening Mirror, April 21, 1854, p. 2)

This painting was purchased directly from the artist by John Osborn, who was Tait's most important patron and acted as his agent in New York.