Doe and Hope

Description

The American wood duck or Carolina duck (Aix sponsa) specimen housed within a sparse naturalistic setting of grasses and branches to a buff paper background, the whole housed in a beautifully crusty glazed display case with remnants of paint, surviving from the middle part of the nineteenth century.

The overall composition is of a good quality and the bird is in good condition though a little dusty, with a little fade to the plumage. The case has a beautiful crusty patination to it and is wonderfully untouched and has echoes of a country house.

Wood Duck, by Isaac McLellan, 1886

Most beauteous of all the race
That skim the wave or soar in space,
With plumage fairer than the rays
The bird-of-paradise displays,
A mottled purple gloss'd with green,
All colors in the rainbow seen
No tropic bird of Indian skies
May rival thy imperial dyes.

Fair are thy haunts, O bird that glows
With hues of violet and rose,—
By lakelet, by transparent stream,
Fair as the landscape of a dream,
Fair with the drooping groves that throw
Their shadows o'er the current's flow
Fair with the bordering slopes that lave
Their grasses in the crystal wave,—
The crystal wave reflecting back
The sky-cloud drifting on its track,
Where morn and eve enfold their wing
Celestial, and the bluebirds sing.