John Martin Tracy (1843-1893), Good and Bad Luck

Lot 215

About Seller

20 Winter Street
Pembroke, MA 02359
United States

Founded in 2005, Copley Fine Art Auctions is a boutique auction house specializing in antique decoys and American, sporting, and wildlife paintings. Over the course of the last two decades, the firm has set auction records for not only individual decoy makers, but also entire carving regions. Copley...Read more

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About Auction

The Winter Sale 2026, Day 1 by Copley Fine Art Auctions

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The Winter Sale 2026, Day 1

By Copley Fine Art Auctions

Feb 20, 2026

Set Reminder 2026-02-20 10:00:00 2026-02-20 10:00:00 America/New_York Bidsquare Bidsquare : The Winter Sale 2026, Day 1 https://www.bidsquare.com/auctions/copley/the-winter-sale-2026-day-1-22120 Lots 1-300 Copley Fine Art Auctions cinnie@copleyart.com

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Lot Description

John Martin Tracy (1843-1893)
Good and Bad Luck
signed "J. M. Tracy" lower right
oil on canvas, 24 by 16 in.

John Martin Tracy is one of the earliest successful American sporting artists. Born in 1843 in Ohio, he was largely raised by his grandparents when his abolitionist preacher father died and his mother, Maria Conant, supported her children with an international career as a journalist. Tracy studied at Oberlin College and Northwestern University before fighting in the Civil War from 1861. After the war, he worked as a teacher to save funds to attend the ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1867. He made a trip to California in 1869, then set up a studio in Chicago before returning to Paris for more study and artistic opportunities, such as participating in the Paris Salon. By the late 1870s, Tracy had settled on his sporting subject matter, and by 1881 he located his studio in Greenwich, Connecticut. He died in 1893 in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, on the Gulf Coast where he often spent his winters.

Known for his exceptionally accurate works, in 1895 "The New York Times" opined that "J. M. Tracy was a painter to delight the heart of all sporting men...He painted the hunter before the flock of birds, the dog with tail extended and paw uplifted, as he stood quivering over the scent; and he did it all con amore, faithfully and with full understanding and knowledge of his subject." His works can be found in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., and the AKC Museum of the Dog in New York. Additionally, Tracy's finely rendered paintings of field trials are in the Johnson Collection in Spartanburg, South Carolina, and the Morris Museum of Art in Augusta, Georgia.

Where A.B. Frost depicted "good luck" and "bad luck" in a pair of two different duck hunting paintings, Tracy creatively portrays the two outcomes of a hunt in the same composition within the hunters' faces, postures, and even the dogs are in on the comparison. The water of the stream is exceptionally well done, with green highlights reflecting the grass and woodland landscape, and the detail on the dogs is meticulous. This painting is one of Tracy's masterworks in every sense, including subject, composition, and execution.

Provenance: Robert S. Doochin Collection

Condition

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