Wild Duck Shooting/On the Wing

Anticipation: every hunter savors it, and the feeling is palpable in this classically composed duck-shooting scene by William Ranney, a noted painter of sporting pictures. Unlike its stylistic precedents in eighteenth-century British sporting art, Ranney’s tight ensemble features robust American characters whose simplicity and vigor were emblematic of the national temperament, at least in the perception of its own proud citizens. Ranney created several versions of this popular and critically well-received image in both pen-and-ink and oil, and it acquired broad distribution through its translation into engravings and lithographs, the latter produced by the well-known firm of Currier and Ives.