Hunting Scene (The Kill)

Copious numbers of hounds attack a presumed fox in this rapidly rendered sketch by Robert Bevan. Bevan was born in Sussex in 1865. He trained first at the Westminster School of Art and then in 1889 at Académie Julian in Paris. Bevan received compliments from Renior for his drawings of horses and equine activites, a subject matter of continual interest to the artist. The present sheet is drawn in colored chalk, a material that Bevan took to during an extended stay in Brittany from 1890-1894. It is close in subject matter to WHO-O-P, a lithograph now held by the British Museum (1926,0511.50) and illustrated as plate 12 in Robert Bevan, A Memoir by His Son (Studio Vista Ltd., 1965). The lithograph, one of four scenes that form a series based on the hunt, dates to 1889-99.