Paintings by Henry Bernard Chalon and Ramsay Richard Reinagle both show English Water Spaniels working with their masters  hunting ducks. An engraving by Henry Thomas Alken Snr. shows a slightly different looking English Water Spaniel, but also reinforces its area of work by again showing it while duck hunting. In The Sportsman's Repository (1820), the author advises that if an individual wishes to hunt ducks or any other type of waterfowl, then the hunter had best use an English Water Spaniel.The breed is described as swimming and diving as well as the ducks themselves; and they are intelligent enough to avoid being lured away from the nesting places. The author described the best variety of the breed to be those with long ears whose coat was white under the belly and around the neck but brown on the back.