Description
A set of 4 Shooting Scenes by Henry Alken (see above Ref VE-ROS1828A,B,C,D.)
Published by Rudolph Ackermann at the Eclipse Sporting Gallery, 191 Regent Street. These prints depict the four most popular forms of game shooting, a sport which, with fishing, was the most easily accessible to most people. The precise date of publication is unknown but it is likely to have been in the first quarter of the 19th century. By then, shooting birds had largely replaced hawking and netting. The guns were muzzle-loading and had an action so comparatively slow that it was necessary to aim considerably in front of a flying bird. Nevertheless, it is recorded that one sportsman, the Norfolk landowner Coke of Holkham, could kill eighty partridges in fewer than a hundred shots. The dogs assisting the sportsmen are bred to perform various tasks: locating the game, flushing them from cover, and retrieving.
