In the Sporting Tradition

The sport of hunting - its celebration of the wild, the natural, the out-of-doors - has given rise to its own body of art. Extraordinary artistic skills wedded with decades of experience as a naturalist and hunter have secured for Herb Booth a place among the contemporary masters of sporting art. This beautiful volume of his work presents forty-nine color plates and ninety-nine black-and-white reproductions of limited edition prints, etchings, and lithographs. Booth's superb technique and his portrayal of an American tradition in the process of change are revealed in a variety of classic hunting and fishing scenes: upland and water-fowl shooting, deer hunting in the Texas Hill Country, casting for redfish and speckled trout in the Gulf of Mexico. Herb Booth has been named the 1993 Texas Ducks Unlimited Artist of the Year and the 1993 Sponsor Artist for the National Wild Turkey Federation, as well. It is fitting, for Booth demonstrates in his work dedication to both hunting and the intelligent use of wildlife and natural resources. The habitats of different game species are meticulously rendered, as are the animals themselves and their interaction with their environment. As author Michael McIntosh notes: "It is a peculiar fact of sporting art that it cannot be successfully faked. A sporting scene, if it aspires to any degree of acceptance, must not only reflect genuine experience on the artist's part but must also evoke the memory and feeling of similar experience in the viewer". The most experienced hunter or naturalist will instantly recognize in Booth's art the sense of authenticity and depth of personal experience he brings to it. Each large color plate in this oversize volumeincludes an extended caption describing the specific scene. McIntosh, himself an experienced hunter and expert on sporting art, details Booth's development as an artist and sportsman in a lively and engaging text. The foreword is contributed by Meredith Long, longtime collector a