Albert Bierstadt's Duck Hunting, like Winslow Homer’s Right and Left, must first and foremost be considered a sporting picture. The small grassy area in the distance on the left in this important landscape coming up at the auction has been lightened slightly to illuminate the figure of the hunter and his gun, which is still smoking. Both are otherwise barely discernible, but primary attention on the hunter is unlikely to have been what Bierstadt intended.

Many have noted the influence of Audubon’s Golden Eye Duck on Homer’s famous Right and Left; yet it seems almost inconceivable that Homer would not have seen, admired, and been inspired by this Bierstadt, the more so when one considers the distant and barely visible gunsmoke in both. (In the Homer, the hunter isn’t visible at all). Critics are less prone to talk about Bierstadt than Homer in terms of philosophical complexity; but the image certainly raises some of the questions about mortality that Homer’s image of ducks addresses some fifty years later.

The Bierstadt will be offered at the Barridoff Galleries auction on April 30, 2014.