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Literature:
William Secord, Dog Painting, 1840-1940 : A Social History of the Dog in Art, Woodbridge, 1992, p. 172, no. 218, illus.

Foremost among scenes of the hunt in the Scaife collection is Arthur Wardle’s Look Out!. By the 1890s, Wardle’s depictions of both domestic and exotic animals, in their natural habitat and with vivacious and acute intelligence, made him one of the best-known British painters of wildlife. Wardle was strongly influenced by Sir Edwin Henry Landseer, but whereas Landseer endowed human emotions upon his animals, Wardle preferred to keep them undisturbed by human responsibility. 

Here, Wardle captures a tense moment in a picturesque landscape: the terrier, ears perked, investigates the ground before him, where below keeps silent and still a rabbit brown as the hole it lives in. This is the silence before the storm, a moment of anticipation – the terrier, bred for this purpose, will surely find its target. Wardle certainly knew how to, and indeed did, compose energetic scenes of chases with a cacophony of action. This image thus further demonstrates his mastery of narrative and of the genre.