The Death of the Fox

George Morland

National Gallery of Art

A hunting party with eight men mostly on horseback and nine dogs gather around a fox being attacked by two dogs in this horizontal landscape painting. The men wear or hold black caps and have jackets in cardinal red or parchment white, and one is in teal blue. The horses are silvery white, chestnut brown, or black. At the center, near the fox, one man dismounts, and another stands to our right of the group. The hounds are white with black and tan spots, and they rush toward the rust-brown fox. The hunters and dogs form a loose line across a grassy area, which is backed with a steeply rising but low hill, topped by trees with feathery canopies. The grass and leaves are painted in tones of sage green and harvest gold. A smudge of brick red in a crevice of the hill could be a person watching from the shadows. One rider on a white horse gives chase in the distance to our left, and the land dips down and back to row of houses along the crest of a rolling hill. Thin screens of white and pale gray clouds float across a pale blue sky above.