Lot 66011: JOHN MARTIN TRACY (American, 1844-1893) Field

JOHN MARTIN TRACY (American, 1844-1893) Field Trials in North Carolina, (Southern Field Trials: Lightfield Deuce & Prince Lucifer), (Central Field Trials), 1891 Oil on canvas 30 x 50 inches (76.2 x 127 cm) Signed lower left: J.M. Tracy PROVENANCE: Private collection. EXHIBITED: "1893 Worlds Columbian Exposition", United States Alcove 182, no. 1156 (exhibited as SOUTHERN FIELD TRIALS, 1891). LITERATURE: W.B. Conkey, Worlds Columbian Exposition, Revised Catalogue Department of Fine Arts, Chicago, p. 74. Ohio-born J.M. Tracy was renowned during his lifetime as a master painter of sporting scenes, dogs and horses, although during his early years as a professional artist he also painted portraits and landscapes of the American West. In 1881, possibly in response to the growing popularity of daguerreotypes, he closed his portrait studio in St. Louis and moved to Greenwich, Connecticut, to focus exclusively upon sporting subjects. The intense training in drawing from memory that Tracy had received at the École des Beaux Arts in Paris proved to be an invaluable tool once he turned to painting hunting subjects. Field Trials in North Carolina is one of the largest works by Tracy to emerge from a private collection in recent decades. Selected by the United States as a work to be shown at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago shortly after it was completed, Fields Trials in North Carolina shows the artist in full command of his mature style at the height of his career.