Read this Wildlife Art Journal article

In every season of the hunt, in nearly every corner of the globe, few relationships are more culturally venerated than the one between wing shooter and bird dog. 

There are the grouse hunters of the Scottish munros and the jungly birch and poplar forests of the upper Midwest USA, the dove peppered pampas and dry hinters of Patagonia in Argentina, the marshes of Arkansas, the prairie potholes of Canada, and, of course, the huge southern bobwhite belt running from the Chihuahuan Desert straddling the U.S.-Mexico border and running clear into the pine plantations of Florida and Carolina. 

In all, it is a huge arc, and Robert Abbett has considered much of it with a brush and sketchbook in hand, going behind the easel to deliver heirloom commissions for devout men and women of the field—works that have never been on public display—and works guided only by Abbett's yen for curiosity and exploration. Abbett is definitely old school, as a classically-trained painter, a descendent from those who were part of "the Golden Age of Illustration", and longevity has elevated him into a dean's chair of sporting art. Indeed, some refer to him today as one of the greatest painters of sporting dog breeds in the world. “Abbett is in a class of his own. He’s going to go down in history as one of the finest sporting artists who ever picked up a brush, but aside from that he’s one helluva painter,” offers Ken Carlson, the wildlife artist from Kerrville, Texas...