Big Starbuck

According to the artist, in a letter dated 1930, the year the work entered the Reading Public Museum’s collection, the subject of the large portrait, “is the younger son of Ambrose Starbuck, a millright [sic] living in a small settlement near Bald Mountain, Tennessee…The character in my picture is not as dangerous as he looks…, being noted for his sense of humor and wonderful skill with the rifle. The writer has personally seen this man break eight out of ten bottles tossed up into the air at a distance of 75 feet with a rifle (not a shotgun).”

Mason was a painter, watercolorist and illustrator who studied with Chauncey F. Ryder, and had produced work for The Saturday Evening Post, Outing Magazine, and Collier’s, among others. He specialized in outdoor hunting scenes. His work is represented in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Currier Museum of Art, and the Illinois State Museum, Springfield.