“The Persuit (La Poursuite)”
“The Persuit (La Poursuite)”
Oil (1895). In his autobiography, Seton said that he painted this large oil trying to imagine how a pack of wolves would look from the rear of a speeding Russian trapper’s sleigh. The painting was begun in 1894. The scene was derived from a story he later published in Forest and Stream titled, “The Baron and the Wolves.” Although the painting’s meaning is ambiguous, one scholar has postulated that Seton “meant to show wicked men pursued by vengeful wolves retaliating against man’s destruction of nature.”
Several preliminary sketches, wolf studies, and color schemes were used in preparing for this painting. After its completion in January 1895, it was submitted for hanging in the Grand Salon of Paris. The painting was rejected, perhaps because the message was not easily understood. Nevertheless, several of the preliminary studies were accepted and displayed.
President Theodore Roosevelt, a friend of Seton’s, was impressed with the painting. He commissioned Seton to paint a canvas of the lead wolf. The resulting painting hung in the Roosevelt Gallery for many years. It was also used as the frontispiece of Volume II or Seton’s Life Histories of Northern Animals.