When I look at A. B. Frost's Autumn Woodcock, I first see the work of a man obviously as comfortable carrying his shotgun into a stand of birch trees as wielding paintbrushes in the confines of his studio. And then the word "timeless" comes to mind. Despite being reminded by the dated clothing and pointing dogs with low tails that this work was done a century ago, his themes and settings are timeless, and can recall experiences we've all had as recent as our latest hunting season.

     Arthur Burdett Frost was born in 1851 and raised in and around Philadelphia, where the outlying fields and woods were a sportsman's paradise, alive with grouse, quail and wild turkeys. His was the time of painters Thomas Eakins and Winslow Homer, "the golden age of illustration," when printing went from wood-cuts to four-color halftones in his own lifetime. Since his day is so removed from ours, I always wonder how it was to paint back then.
At that time, pictorial art was communication and entertainment for millions of Americans through which they saw" places they otherwise might never have known. The awesome paintings of Frederick Church, for example, traveled the country, with throngs of people paying to see them. Fortunately, during Frost's formative years, realism was the only art style known to most of Americans, as the modern "isms" from Europe had yet to breed their confusion.

     Always obsessed with nature, Arthur Frost relentlessly sketched and hunted and fished as a lad. His professional art career began as an apprentice wood-engraver/messenger, but soon ended once he admitted that he had "no apparent talent in either." But he did learn the economy of line, and when in 1874 his early illustrations in Max Adler's book Out of the Hurly Burly emerged, his drawings from that point on glowed with surprising warmth and humor. Success was suddenly upon him.

     As printing improved, magazines grew in number and artists became a sought-after commodity. In 1876 Frost signed on as a staff illustrator with Harper's Weekly and later Colliers, working alongside Thomas Eakins and Frederick Remington. He painted mostly sporting subjects, though some were political (it has been said that Frost, not Tom Nast, created the Democratic Party’s donkey icon), and tussled with the demands of deadlines and page design just as illustrators would do for years coming. The stigma against illustration favoring gallery art as the purer art form came later; in fact during Frost's time, working illustrators attracted good pay and a popularity approaching today's stars of our entertainment industry.  Those years were seminal for him, defining his life's pattern as he vigorously pursued both a demanding illustration career and his obsession for the rod and reel and the great out-of-doors. Let us understand, he was not a casual person, but one tightly wound with great nervous energy who threw all of himself into every endeavor. Frost was totally consumed by these two activities, but actually they served his needs in tandem. His artwork supported his many hunting and fishing excursions, and these in turn supplied inspiration and subject matter for his art. Not a bad setup, one that works for some of us even today.  In the absence of any anti-hunting sentiment, Frost was free to tailor his exceptional hunting scenes into his depictions of rural America. Game was available in such great numbers, and with unlimited bags and seasons, hunting was a highly rewarding activity, which for some meant help in feeding their families. His sensitivity to ordinary, sometimes poor people, gave his paintings an even wider acceptance.

     After their marriage in 1883, the Frosts soon moved to a fine home, nicknamed "Moneysunk," in Covent, New Jersey. There, he reveled in the grouse, quail and woodcock shooting on his own 250 acres. He took hunting trips to Canada, the Pocono’s Mountains and more often to the Jersey Shore where he hunted and explored the many wild beaches, inlets and grassy shallows, and made hundreds of on-scene sketches for later use as painting material.  Frost's first-person familiarity with the men, dogs and games of shooting and fishing helped his art reach many levels of audiences. In a marvelous compliment, Teddy Roosevelt, a famous sportsman and naturalist before becoming president, wrote him in 1885, ". . . damn the expense! I want at least five pictures, and six if you can give them." What an emotional boost this would be to any artist working today!

     A. B. Frost excelled in pen-and-ink, and is well remembered for his homey, textured illustrations for Joel Chandler Harris' Uncle Remus and his Friends (1892), which brought him recognition as the foremost artist of rural America. His famous Shooting Pictures folio (1895) of twelve hunting-scene lithographs is undoubtedly his best known hunting art, and the set is still highly collectible today.  While many of A. B. Frost's magazine and book projects were in done in black and white, he also painted in watercolor and oils, even though he endured a serious visual problem throughout his life. Frost was red-green color blind, and he admitted to simply reading the labels on the tubes if necessary and always layed out the colors in a pre-arranged order on his palette. Could his use of limited color schemes and cloudy day lighting have been a partial fail-safe solution to this disorder? Most of the scenes in the Shooting Pictures folio were painted in hazy sun or cloudy day light which, when coupled with his muted, limited use of color, gave his paintings a very natural look. To me, this quiet quality sets his work apart from the gaudier, cadmium-laced color schemes we too often see in today's sporting and outdoor art.
How much did Frost paint on site, and when did he work inside? These questions are unimportant, because it was his razor sharp observations and his uncanny ability to paint them which made his pictures honest and successful. The landscapes in Frost's paintings, where the shooters and hunting dogs lived their sport, show his intense love of nature in the many species of trees and scrubs distinctly presented and easily identifiable.

     Frost painted every work with its own design and texture, each a specific location. Further, we are seemingly pulled right in with him and the hunter, the guides and pushers and dogs. Too often today, sporting artists either completely omit the people from sporting art, or bore us silly with their unedited amounts of over-done detail.  Frost painted his gunners well - they even look like they were living in a slower time - showing us his knowledge of drapery (clothing) and human posture. And while his dog anatomy is also exemplary, he is one of the few (if any) sporting artists brave enough to stick a tree trunk in front of a pointing dog (October Woodcock Shooting), something you and I know certainly occurs, and which again adds realism to the entire picture.

     As photography became dependable, artists embraced it wholeheartedly - the argument of camera vs. memory continues in art schools today. We don't know if Frost was acquainted with Muybridge's work in sequential photography, circa 1870, which revealed wing positions of flying birds other than the stereo-typical ones used before - wings extended straight out or upward. Sadly, Frost's birds in flight did not break new ground.  But did Frost employ photographs? Did he sometimes take pictures of his hunters? Perhaps, and may have combined them later with a pre-selected setting, not unlike how many of us work today. He did have a Mr. Engels send him photographs of a shooter posed in a Barnegat sneak-box taken at his direction near Atlantic City. But again, his consistent ability to meld realism with emotion makes the photography discussion moot.

     It is fascinating to study the sporting scenes of an artist so renowned in his own time and still popular in ours, an idol such as A. B. Frost. Over and over again his captivating work draws me in, past the picture frame and into places and times of his era, where I walk the fields he walked and watch the dogs that quivered on point in front of him. The validity and spirit of A. B. Frost's drawings and paintings transcend his extraordinary technical abilities. His works now belong to you just as they belonged to him, just as they will belong to every sporting-minded person in years to come.

Editor's Note: The author welcomes reader comments. You can e-mail him at oakdaleart@att.net or visit his web site: www.robertabbett.com.