Fox Hunt
Returned to lender
This work of art was on loan to the museum and has since been returned to its lender.Fox Hunt is widely viewed as Homer’s most haunting late "naturalist" painting. Rendered in a manner that suggests a close study of Japanese woodblock prints, it dramatically embodies the recurrent theme of conflict in nature. The subject is novel for the artist, though he had been depicting scenes of hunting and fishing for years. Here, Homer has removed any trace of human presence and focused on the Darwinian struggle of natural selection in the animal kingdom: during a bleak Maine winter, an ominous flock of hungry crows become predators and a fox, desperately moving through heavy snow drifts, the prey. That the artist appears to have painted the scene from the hunted creature’s perspective, identifying with its plight, only heightens the tension.
Artwork Details
- Title: Fox Hunt
- Artist: Winslow Homer (American, Boston, Massachusetts 1836–1910 Prouts Neck, Maine)
- Date: 1893
- Culture: American
- Medium: Oil on canvas
- Dimensions: 38 x 68 1/2 in. (96.5 x 174.0 cm)
Framed: 53 x 83 1/4 in. (134.6 x 211.5 cm) - Credit Line: Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Joseph E. Temple Fund (1894.4)
- Rights and Reproduction: Barbara Katus
- Curatorial Department: The American Wing