Percival Leonard Rosseau (1859-1937)

Setters on Partridge

Signed "Rosseau" lower right

Oil on canvas, 24 by 32 inches

Percival Rosseau was born near Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Considered a premier painter of sporting dogs, Rosseau 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 "Académie Julian," where he studied under Jules Lefebvre (1836-1911), whose other students included Frank W. Benson (1862-1952), Childe Hassam (1859-1935), and Edmund C. Tarbell (1862-1938). 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. 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. Rosseau’s best works capture the tense action of hunting dogs and depict them in romantic landscapes. His style is loose and painterly, showing the influence of the French Barbizon School. Rosseau’s debt to the Barbizon tradition is apparent in “Setters on Partridge,” with its softly defined brushstrokes, rich colors, and pastoral setting. It is likely that this work features two of the dogs from the Rockefeller kennel hunting partridge on the grounds of Overhills. The setters are perfectly positioned in the composition, leading the viewer’s eye into the distance towards the birds they have located. With its finely rendered dogs and warm, golden background, “Setters on Partridge” ranks among Rosseau’s most desirable works.

Provenance: Private Collection, Virginia