The Northwood King-Calling the Moose

Additional Information

Provenance:
Kennedy Galleries, New York, NY, ca. 1968
Coeur d’Alene Art Auction, Reno, NV, 2006
Scottsdale Art Auction, Scottsdale, AZ, 2008
Christie’s, New York, NY, 2015

Literature:
Philip R. Goodwin: America’s Sporting & Wildlife Artist, Larry Len Peterson, Coeur d’Alene Art Auction, Hayden, ID, 2001: p. 312.
American Sports and Sportsmen, Kennedy Galleries, New York, NY, 1968: p. 11.
Wild Spaces, Open Seasons: Hunting and Fishing in American Art, edited by Kevin Sharp, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, OK, 2016: p. xiv-1, 81

Exhibitions:
Recapturing the Real West: Collections of William I. Koch, The Society of the Four Arts, Palm Beach, Florida, February 4-April 15, 2012

Painted prior to 1910, The Northwood King–Calling the Moose evokes the quintessential adventure imagery of the work’s creator, Philip R. Goodwin. As with many of Goodwin’s most famous paintings, it is a work with several overt themes: male friendship, the thrill of the hunt, the danger of nature and the cliffhanger storytelling left incomplete by the action of the scene. Does the hunter make a successful shot, or does he miss provoking the moose to charge? The viewer will have to decide the outcome.

Although Goodwin had experience outdoors, his knowledge of nature was limited in comparison to many of his closest acquaintances, including Charles M. Russell and Carl Rungius. It was Rungius, the “Rembrandt of the moose,” who invited Goodwin to Alberta, Canada, in 1911 to document big game. “Rungius and Goodwin had studios near each other on 23rd Street in New York, and as both were interested in sport and the out-of-doors they had something in common,” writes William J. Schaldach in Carl Rungius: Big Game Painter. “Goodwin was then working on big game subject matter in connection with calendars and magazine illustrations, and Rungius was able to give him much valuable help and advice. The trip to Alberta resulted from Goodwin’s desire to study big game animals at first hand and to paint sketches on the spot. He had never had any experience in hunting big game in the West, so Rungius instructed him as best he could. He told Goodwin never to leave camp on a painting excursion without taking a rifle along. You never could tell what opportunity would turn up and it was wise to be prepared.”

During that Canada trip, Goodwin ventured from camp one day without his rifle. While painting on a narrow ledge, a grizzly bear approached the artist from about 40 feet away. Both remained motionless, until finally the bear swung around and departed without incident. Goodwin had already painted The Northwood King–Calling the Moose at that point, but he was surely heeding its message to never leave camp without his rifle. Schaldach notes that the incident “proves the old saying, ‘You always see game when you don’t have a gun.’”

The Northwood King–Calling the Moose appeared in the 2016 traveling exhibition Wild Spaces, Open Seasons: Hunting and Fishing in American Art. “At any point in American history, hunting—whether for sustenance, commerce, or sport—has involved a high level of risk for both hunter and prey alike. Dangers abound when human interests intersect with animal instinct, as in Philip R. Goodwin’s The Northwood King—Calling the Moose,” writes Kory W. Rogers in the exhibition’s catalog. “Nineteenth-century paintings of hunters in peril continue to provoke and thrill audiences much as they did when first unveiled. Encoded with new notions of masculinity, these paintings trace 19th-century America’s changing attitudes toward the activity of hunting from lower-class means of survival to a sporting culture that appealed to middle- and upper-class men against the backdrop of modernity.”

This lot is accompanied by a copy of the book Wild Spaces, Open Seasons: Hunting and Fishing in American Art.

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Please note that the first unframed photo is most accurate for color. Framed photographs are to show the frame and are not color corrected to the painting.

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