Arthur Fitzwilliam Tait (1819-1905)
Buck and Doe, 1858
signed and dated "Ja.S M. Hart and A.F Tait NY 1858" lower left
oil on board, 14 by 10 in.

Known as one of America's earliest sporting artists, Arthur Fitzgerald Tait was born in Liverpool, England, in 1819. From an early age, he was interested in both art and the outdoors. As a young man, Tait trained in lithography and drawing, and explored the open land around Manchester.

In Liverpool, Tait met American artist George Catlin (1796-1872), which may have whetted the young artist's appetite to explore. In 1850 Tait came to America, where his artistic career flourished. He worked from a studio in New York City, but spent a great deal of time on Long Lake in the Adirondacks, where he acquired skills as an angler, hunter, and keen observer of wildlife. These skills were as important for Tait's art as his ability with brush and pigment, since they gave an authenticity to his portrayals of outdoor life, unrivalled at the time.

In 1852 Nathaniel Currier (1813-1888) and James Merritt Ives (1824-1895) purchased the first of many works from the artist, and Tait was asked to hang a half-dozen works at the National Academy of Design's annual exhibition, which he later joined as a full member. Editions of Tait's works for Currier and Ives were reproduced by the thousands and formed some of America's most iconic images of the era.

Buck and Doe was painted in 1858 as a collaboration with noted landscape painter James McDougal Hart (1828-1901), also a member of the National Academy of Design, with whom Tait worked at least two dozen times. A painting known to be by the two artists is in the Brooklyn Museum, and a Winterthur exhibition in 2016-17 noted, "Such a collaborative approach was a direct extension of practices Tait had learned in the lithographic workshop, where artists often devoted themselves to specialized tasks." "Often Hart would collaborate with Arthur Fitzwilliam Tait, and the two artists produced together over two dozen paintings. Tait would paint the animals, while Hart supplied the landscape."

Today, Tait's wilderness, frontier, and wildlife scenes hang in some of the most prominent museums and private collections, including the permanent collections of the the Adirondack Museum, Blue Mountain Lake, New York; the Brooklyn Museum, New York; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Shelburne Museum, Vermont; and the Tate Gallery, London, among others.

Provenance: Harry T. Peters, Middleburg, Virginia
The Congoleum Corporate Collection, Christie's, New York, January 27, 1987, lot 44
Private Collection, Weston, Massachusetts

Literature: Warder H. Cadbury and Henry F. Marsh, "Arthur Fitzwilliam Tait: Artist in the Adirondacks," Newark, DE, 1986, pp. 145-146, no. 58.60, illustrated.

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