Deer stealers pursued by sleuth hounds
1875

Briton RIVIÉRE

Medium: oil on canvas
Measurements: 99.0 × 135.5 cm
Inscription: inscribed in brown paint l.l.: Briton Riviere. 1875
Accession Number: p.305.7-1
Department: International Painting
Credit Line: National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased, 1876
This digital record has been made available on NGV Collection Online through the generous support of Digitisation Champion Ms Carol Grigor through Metal Manufactures Limited
Gallery location: 19th Century European Paintings Gallery
Level 2, NGV International
About this work: Rivière was a child prodigy who at the age of eleven exhibited two pictures at the British Institution and he began showing at the Royal Academy when he was only eighteen. He was a noted animalier who spent hours at the London Zoo studying and drawing animals. This work was inspired by the unfair gaming laws that prohibited the populace from hunting for food on crown land in medieval times. Although the focus of the picture is the wounded hound, there is a sense of the desperation of the thieves. The inequity of such laws inspired the folkloric hero Robin Hood.
Subjects (general): Animals Law, Civics and Protest Violence
Subjects (specific): arrows bows (weapons) dog (species) hunting injury (medical condition) rocks (landforms)
Provenance: Collection of John Hargreaves, London, 1876; from whom purchased by Agnew's (dealer), London, 14 June 1876 (no. 9997); from where purchased, for the NGV, 29 June 1876.

Frame

Presented here only in the slip.
Artists would sometimes use a slip like this to protect the edges of the painting at the time of sale – leaving the opportunity for the owner to continue the framing by commissioning the decorative, main body of the frame. In this case it is more likely the frame has been lost.
Framemaker: Unknown - 19th century
Materials: timber, gesso, gold leaf