Black-Footed Ferret

John Woodhouse Audubon

National Gallery of Art

A tawny brown, long-bodied ferret leaning over a grassy mound in this horizontal painting. The animal’s body creates an arch supported on its short, darker brown legs. Its thin tail is lifted and a dark brown band across its paler, cream-white face resembles a mask. The animal has short claws and compact, rounded ears. The ferret appears to investigate a small nest at the lower center of the painting. The nest is partially hidden among tufts of grass and contains four pale, speckled eggs. Grassy hills roll back to the horizon, which comes halfway up this composition, and a sheet of white clouds mostly covers the blue-gray sky above.