OK, show of hands here: how many of you have been to the National Museum of Wildlife Art in Jackson Hole? If you’ve visited, you could not possibly miss seeing at least one of the many fabulous Rungius paintings in their collection - especially since there are two giant Rungius pieces flanking the reception desk.
Now, how many of you have studied a Rungius original up close? we’re talking from a few inches away (or as close as you can without alarming the docents and security folks).
I’d seen plenty of Rungius images in books, but until I saw one in the flesh, I had no idea how THICK the paint is on the man’s canvases. He seems to have layered values and hues pretty frequently, and often his top 2 or 3 layers are very broken - like dry paint dragged across other mostly dry paint. On one of his moose pieces, I could swear the paint was more than a quarter-inch thick on some of the tree branches and antler tines.
I recall reading that he worked rather quickly, and could complete a “major” canvas in as little as 4 days. How the heck did he manage to build such thick and broken layers of paint that fast? I don’t know what painting media were available back then, but it sure seems like he must have been using an aggressive drier that allowed for impasto technique. Opinions?
Postscript: in the course of poking around on the web for Rungius info, I stumbled across this essay that accompanied a Rungius exhibition in 2001. It’s worthwhile reading, and my eye was especially caught by this quote:
…this is a concern with wildlife art - that isolating works depicting similar subject matter does nothing to move the tradition forward. Artist Robert V. Clem has said, “…I have been increasingly put off at the extent to which…works involving natural history subject matter are relentlessly categorised as “wildlife art,” in such contrast to everything else which seemingly qualifies as simply ‘art.’” Indeed, during his day, Carl Rungius confronted the same issue, “What do you mean, Sporting art? There is only art; it may be good or bad, but it’s still art.”
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