The Fox Hunt.
After Winslow Homer, 1893. Oil on canvas.
4 feet by 8 feet.
Private collection, Devon, Pennsylvania.

After 1890, Homer frequently depicted "naturalist" subjects - hunting and fishing in the Adirondacks and coastal or marine views at Prout's Neck, Maine. Critics have interpreted these works as potent expressions of Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection, an idea of great currency in the late nineteenth century. "Fox Hunt" was Homer's largest painting to date, and of a size appropriate for the depiction of survival and its casualties. He dramatized the brutal realities of winter on the Maine coast by showing a fox desperately bounding through deep snow in an attempt to flee a flock of half-starved crows. The birds descend ominously with outstretched wings, forming a dark hovering mass above the struggling fox.