The Day's Sport

James Ward, 1769–1859

1826

Oil on canvas

Yale Center for British Art

A winter hunting scene depicts several men with dogs and a horse, with a collection of game birds in the foreground. Two children observe from a fence in the background. A winter hunting scene depicts several men with dogs and a horse, with a collection of game birds in the foreground. Two children observe from a fence in the background. This complex painting partly belongs to the tradition of seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish game pieces by Frans Snyders, Jan Weenix, and others, in which the "bag," the spoils of a day's shooting, stands for the bounty of nature. Much in the painting, particularly the handling of trees, reflects James Ward's love of Snyders and Rubens. But the wintry subject also appears to have offered Ward other possibilities and themes arising from his evangelical Anglicanism