A Fox with a Fallen Duck, Original Oil on Canvas by Ernest Brigot, Signed, 19th Century

A fox stands over a duck it has just killed. Its jaws are closed on the bird's neck and its head is turned down and back toward the body, one forepaw planted on the ground beside it. The bird lies on its back with both wings thrown wide, the white underside of the plumage spread across the whole lower half of the canvas, and the dark head hanging at the centre.

The fox is painted in deep russet and grey brown, its brush lifted behind it and the pale mask of its muzzle catching what light there is. Everything around the two animals is dark. A heavy tree fills the upper left, and behind it a bank of foliage runs across to the right, where the wood opens onto a low pale sky with a thin bare tree and a distant line of hills.

The light comes from that opening, late and weak, and it falls on the duck's feathers before anything else. The white of the bird is the brightest thing in the picture and the composition is built on that contrast.

Signed at the lower right, the canvas is square and sold unframed. There is minor loss to the paint layer along the edges, while the canvas itself and the signature are intact.