Edmund Henry Osthaus (1858-1928), Setter Puppies

Lot 42

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65 Sharp Street
Hingham, MA 02043
United States

Copley Fine Art Auctions is the world's leading American sporting art auction company. Located in Hingham, MA, Copley specializes in antique decoys and 19th- and 20th-century American, sporting, and wildlife paintings. Principal Stephen O'Brien Jr., a fourth-generation sportsman with a refined colle...Read more

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About Auction

The Sporting Sale 2022, Day 1 by Copley Fine Art Auctions

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The Sporting Sale 2022, Day 1

By Copley Fine Art Auctions

Jul 14, 2022

Set Reminder 2022-07-14 10:00:00 2022-07-14 10:00:00 America/New_York Bidsquare Bidsquare : The Sporting Sale 2022, Day 1 https://www.bidsquare.com/auctions/copley/the-sporting-sale-2022-day-1-9460 Lots 1-332 Copley Fine Art Auctions cinnie@copleyart.com

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Lot Description

Edmund Henry Osthaus (1858-1928)
Setter Puppies, 1890
signed and dated "Edm. H Osthaus 1890" lower left
oil on canvas, 18 by 36 in.

Few artists, if any, captured the life and vitality of a litter of pups better than Osthaus does in this masterful portrait of an English setter family.

Osthaus was an instructor at the Toledo Academy of Fine Arts. He then served as the director from 1886-1893, before resigning to devote “his life to painting, shooting, and following field trials. He gunned for prairie chickens, ruffed grouse, snipe, woodcock, and pheasants, but bobwhites were his favorites,” report Kay and George Evans in a 1970 "Field & Stream" magazine.

"Edmund Osthaus followed field trials from the fall prairie chicken trials in Canada to the important quail trials in the South in mid-winter, judging, sketching, and sometimes entering his dogs,” the Evans continue. “Thousands of shooting men have formed their tastes in dogs from Osthaus paintings...they know his setters and pointers as real dogs pointing and retrieving real birds." "One man called them ‘healthy wet-nosed dogs that hunt, wag, sympathize, and love.’”

According to Evans, Edmund Osthaus’ paintings exhibit “the character of the early Llewellin and English setters in this country, their beauty and integrity as bird dogs, and what they meant to those of us who care. Each Osthaus portrait of a gun dog went beyond even that, capturing the individual dog and making him exist after he is gone." Along with Rosseau, perhaps no other American artist better portrayed the english setter. This major oil of seven pups is one of the artist's greatest portraits.

Provenance: Private Collection, New York

Literature: Kay and George Evans, "Dogs That Live Forever," Field & Stream, vol. LXXV, no. 2, June 1970, pp. 234-240.

Condition

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