Tristan Lacroix, Huntsman and Four Hounds, French Oil on Panel, Signed and Dated 1891

The picture is unusually luminous for a wooded autumn scene. The huntsman's scarlet coat is the only saturated colour in it, set against foliage turned rust and copper, and the hounds crowd in around him.

Oil on wood panel, 12 1/2 x 16 inches (32 x 41 cm), signed and dated Tristan Lacroix 1891 lower right, unframed.

The man has his back to us. He is bent forward, gathering the hounds by their collar chains, one hand already through a loop and the other reaching for the next. The dogs press against his legs, one turning its head away, another walking out towards the foreground with its tail up. The horn is slung across his shoulder and the whip handle shows at his hip. Behind them a post and rail fence runs out to a wet meadow and a village under a grey sky, painted thinly enough that the ground of the panel carries the light through the whole picture, while the leaves and the red coat are laid on with a loaded brush that stands up off the surface.

Small paint losses run along the four edges where the wood is exposed, and a fine craquelure crosses the sky and the red coat, both normal to a panel of this date. The panel is light in the hand for its size, thin oak of the kind sold ready prepared to painters working out of doors.