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DUNMORE, Attributed to Lord Alfred
[The Buffalo Hunt]
[?Manitoba, Canada: circa 1859-1862]. Watercolour on paper. Sheet size: 8 3/4 x 13 1/2 inches. Laid down onto a larger ruled sheet. Unsigned, title and attribution on Kennedy Galleries labels. In excellent condition, with bright colors and sharp detail. A short closed tear, neatly repaired, is in the grass at the very bottom of left-center foreground. Matted and glazed within a decorated gilt frame. Provenance: Kennedy Galleries; Collection of Edward Eberstadt & Sons.
A dramatic watercolour of British 'dudes' hunting Buffalo: a superb depiction of the West at a very early date.
This graphic image of a buffalo hunt, probably near Fort Ellice, Manitoba, in western Canada, was painted by an English nobleman visiting the West on an exotic sporting adventure. A hunter, carrying a buffalo rifle, has dismounted from a horse to inspect a fallen buffalo bull, while behind him three mounted hunters pursue more buffalo, cut from a large herd seen grazing on the horizon, with a mountain range as a backdrop. Close attention is paid to the rather formal attire of the hunters, who sport buckskin jackets, stiff white shirts, and broad-brimmed hats. The buffalo and horses are drawn quite well, with their power and speed clearly delineated.
Kennedy Galleries attributed this painting to 'Lord Alfred Dunsmore' [sic], but it was actually executed by the Honourable Alfred Murray, who used the courtesy title Lord Alfred Dunmore. He was the younger brother of the 7th Earl of Dunmore, and first visited Canada with his future brother-in-law of James Carnegie, the ninth Earl of Southesk (1827-1905). 'In 1859 Southesk undertook in search of health a prolonged hunting expedition in Western Canada. He traversed some of the wildest and least known parts of the Rockies about the sources of the rivers Athabasca and Saskatchewan. He returned home in 1860' (DNB), marrying Dunmore's sister Lady Susan Murray on 29 November 1860.
'Lord Dunmore' whose great-grandfather had been the last colonial governor of Virginia, was in his late teens at the time of the expedition with Southesk. That he enjoyed the experience is confirmed by the fact that he was back in Canada again by the end of August 1862. According to Marshall Sprague in A Gallery of Dudes (Boston & Toronto: Little Brown, 1966), Dunmore delayed the expedition of fellow countrymen Viscount Milton and Dr. Walter Butler Cheadle, first by supposed illness and then by his sporting proclivities: 'It was August 23 when [Milton & Cheadle] … set out finally, up the lovely Assiniboine valley toward Fort Carlton... They dawdled two days later so that Milton could attend a country wedding ... Then Cheadle was summoned off their route by Lord Southesk's brother-in-law, Lord Dunmore, whose messenger said he was dying of jaundice. After two days of fatiguing forced march, Cheadle reached Fort Ellice, near the junction of Assiniboine and Qu'Appelle Rivers, to be told that his lordship felt very much better and was off hunting buffalo.'
Cf. James Carnegie, 9th Earl of Southesk. Saskatchewan and the Rocky Mountains (Edinburgh, 1875); Cf. A.G. Doughty & G. Lanctot (editors) Cheadle's Journal of a trip across Canada, 1862-1863 (Ottawa, 1931); cf. William Wentworth Fitzwilliam, Viscount Milton & Walter Butler CheadleThe North-West Passage by Land (London:1865); Marshall Sprague A Gallery of Dudes (Boston & Toronto: Little Brown, 1966), pp. 73.
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#18555 $19,500.00 
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© 2002-2005 Donald A. Heald
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