Percival Rosseau (1859-1937), Pair of Aces

Lot 59

About Seller

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 Winter Sale 2023, Day 1 by Copley Fine Art Auctions

Live

The Winter Sale 2023, Day 1

By Copley Fine Art Auctions

Feb 24, 2023

Set Reminder 2023-02-24 10:00:00 2023-02-24 10:00:00 America/New_York Bidsquare Bidsquare : The Winter Sale 2023, Day 1 https://www.bidsquare.com/auctions/copley/the-winter-sale-2023-day-1-11939 Lots 1-337 Copley Fine Art Auctions cinnie@copleyart.com

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Lot Description

Percival Rosseau (1859-1937)
Pair of Aces, 1921
signed and dated "Rosseau 1921" lower right
oil on canvas, 12 1/2 by 19 1/2 in.

Percival Rosseau was born near Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in 1859. Although considered a premier painter of sporting dogs, he did not pick up a paintbrush until the age of thirty-five. After leaving an eclectic business career, including stints as a cowboy and a lumberjack, he sailed to Paris to attend the AcadÃ©mie Julian. His entry at the 1904 Paris Salon, a painting of a pair of Irish wolfhounds, gained him pivotal acclaim. He returned to the United States where he found a ready market for his work among wealthy sportsmen and received many commissions from first-rate breeders of pointers and setters. Rosseau's best works capture the tense action of hunting dogs and depict them in romantic landscapes.

Among these patrons was Percy Rockefeller, nephew of oil tycoon John. D. Rockefeller and a successful businessman in his own right. Along with several investors, Rockefeller built Overhills, a private hunt and country club with stables and kennels in Cumberland County, North Carolina. He kept a cottage on the property for Rosseau to use when he traveled to the state, and the artist painted there throughout the 1920s and 1930s.

Dog historian A. F. Hochwalt writes, "Eventually such men as Samuel G. Allen, Harry D. Kirkover and others who own high class shooting dogs began to cultivate his acquaintance, for artists who can portray the pointer and the setter, as he really appears in the field, those who are able to transfer to canvas an actual hunting scene where the dog is not a mere caricature, are few and far between the world over, but particularly so here in America."

Rosseau's debt to the Barbizon tradition is apparent in "Pair of Aces" with its softly defined brushstrokes, rich colors, and pastoral setting. This exceptional, small work is one of the artist's true gems.

Condition

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