The Retrieve

William Tylee Ranney

National Gallery of Art

Two pale-skinned men in a marshy landscape look at a wide-eyed dog, which holds a dead duck in its mouth in this horizontal landscape painting. One man kneels facing our left in profile and holds one hand out toward the dog. The man has short, dark hair and a dark beard with no mustache. He wears a beige-colored jacket trimmed with red, dark brown pants, and knee-high brown boots. He holds a rifle by its barrel with his other hand so the stock rests on the ground in the lower right corner of the painting. Four dead ducks lie by his foot, where hobnails lining on the sole and heel gleam. The second man stands just behind and to the left of the kneeling fellow. The standing man is clean-shaven and wears a red, brimless, high-crowned cap on his dark hair. His jacket is golden brown, his pants are marine blue, and boots are pale brown. He loads or cleans the barrel of his rifle with a rod. He looks down at the dog, who looks intently at the kneeling man. The dog is mostly brown with long fur and white spots on its nose and down the front of its neck. The animal sits at attention with the bird’s wing clamped in its mouth. Tall marshy grasses and cattails grow around the men and dog, and around a narrow body of water in the near distance to the right. A larger body of water stretches to the horizon, which comes almost two-thirds of the way up the composition. The sky is streaked with pink along the horizon and blanketed with purple-tinged, gray clouds. The artist signed and dated the painting on the bottom edge, “W Ranney 1850.”