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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May 26th, 2008 at 4:53 am
I have not seen a Rungius original. I bet they are amazing up close. Did he work in oils?
As far as wildlife art is concerned - I think many people separate themselves from nature that is not tame or controlled. Nature is pruned and trimmed and whipped into shape. Wild is some thing to be feared. Tame it, kill it, cage it. So if people do not value wild nature they will not value a painting of it.
May 26th, 2008 at 7:51 am
I’ve been to the museum quite a few times and am, in fact,a member. I always look forward to my “Rungius fix”. He’s a major inspiration for me. I’ve got every book on him that I’ve been able to find (all three), but, as you’ve pointed out, there is no substitute for seeing the originals, especially when the surface texture is so much a part of the visual impact of his work.
I took a workshop from Jim Wilcox some years ago and we spent part of an afternoon at the museum. He took us through the Rungius paintings on display one by one, talking about them from a craft/technical point of view. One comment that stuck with me (I think we were looking at the one of the black bear) was about how no one really knows how he achieved that surface texture. The paint is clearly layered and layered on, but the result isn’t like anything Wilcox had seen anywhere else.
I’ve been back a few times since and have also gotten as close as I dared looking with what I’ve learned since then and I can’t figure it out either. And I have reached a point where I can look at quite a few paintings and tell you exactly what shape of brush was used and in what order the strokes were laid down and how the edges were handled.
The personal connection for me was afterwards when we were back out doing plein air at String Lake and Jim came by, pointed at my trees and said to remember Rungius’ trees, which was to say, stop worrying about branches, see the simplest shapes. Words to live by as a painter.
I also remember reading that in order to be accepted by the eastern art establishment (of course the only one there was in this country at the time) he started doing the “cowboy” subjects, which turned the trick for him in a way that his wildlife art hadn’t. I think about that sometimes as I plot my career- how to stay out of being pegged as a member of the wildlife art “ghetto”. Shawn Gould and I have talked about how we have both become selective about how we describe what we do and when and where we are willing to use the phrase “wildlife artist”. He’s felt the mental eye roll, same as me. The more things change……
May 26th, 2008 at 9:54 pm
The reason Rungius was so amazing was because he could draw very well. He was trained academically on the figure in Germany when traditional drawing and painting was the norm (same time and place as Kuhnert). Rungius himself said life drawing (drawing from the nude) was the foundation to everything he did thereafter. He also said you need to learn anatomy so well that you can forget about it. So, like Sargent, he was able to boldly lay down his stokes based on all the planes he learned from drawing animal structure from the inside out. No fussing with the paint, just confident strokes. But like Sargent, he finished his paintings alla prima on top of an under painting. I’ve read he did work in layers starting from transparent thin washes and building up the lights thicker and the distant areas thinner.
I did get to see the collection at the Museum in Wyoming plus a tour came to the Autry Museum in Los Angeles which I went to three times. I was also just in Calgary Canada a few weeks ago and had no idea that my hotel was right behind the Glenbow Museum where so many great Rungius/Banff paintings are. I was super bummed that I didn’t realize it since I have the Rungius book from the Glenbow.
I’m pretty sure he was able to achieve some of his impasto by mixing piles of paint first with a pallet knife (as opposed to mixing with a brush) and then loading them at the “end” of the painting after the under painting was working. This is similar to European figure painting that he would have/could have learned at the art academy when he was studying there. I also read somewhere that he studied the works of Rubens and if you see a Rubens in real life as opposed to a picture in a book, you will see something very similar,…active brushwork and super thick impasto in the lights.
May 27th, 2008 at 4:10 am
I’d bet there are precious few (if any) who really paint “wildlife” the way Rungius did — not just with regard to technique, but also with regard to wandering around in the back country for subject matter.
You simply don’t/can’t get the look of “wildness” in a photo of an animal at a zoo, game farm or even “preserve” or park. I still can’t get over how tame all the animals look in the photos i took at triple D game farm (except the badger when Jay got very close to it!).
And even if you make the effort to go into the back country, you have to be very lucky (or perhaps unlucky, depending on the situation) to encounter most predators. I lived in Utah for close to 15 years and spent lots of time hiking around in wilderness areas in the mountains and in the desert, but I only came across a bear once face to face “out there” and i never saw a mountain lion though I saw lots of tracks, scat and other sign (fur from rabbits) and was apparently “followed” by a cougar once near capital reef, according to some friends who came behind me and saw the cat’s paw prints on top of my foot prints in the sand.
May 27th, 2008 at 4:23 am
When i say “tame” above what i am really referring to is really a “state of relaxation”.
few of the animals in my photos show any fear.
Animals in the wilds are rarely if ever “relaxed” when you encounter them. If anything, they are at a heightened state of alert — either ready to turn tail and run or fight.
What the animals in my photos need is a good shot of adrenaline (just kidding, of course).
May 27th, 2008 at 7:02 am
It’s a goal of mine to get to the Glenbow Museum at some point and check out the Rungius collection. I was chatting with Tim Shinabarger about it at one point - he’d stopped there on his way to a hunting/art reference trip in northern Canada - and he said they were more than happy to bring out piles of Rungius drawings for him to leaf through! wow.
Joe, that’s very interesting about both Rungius and Rubens doing an underpainting first, then glopping on the light paint. I’ve learned (through painful trial and error) that applying darks thickly doesn’t work as well - it’s just sort of dead. Thin darks, with some brushiness, are more active visually.
I often tone my canvases, but almost never do I do what I would consider an underpainting - getting close to final values and hues in a thin paint layer. Wonder if I oughta try it…
Suzanne, Rungius did indeed work in oils - acrylic paints weren’t invented until, what, the 1940s or 1950s, I think?
I’d agree with Larry that animals which are either captive or habituated are more relaxed around people than totally wild animals. I prize my wild Alaskan grizzly bear photos highly; I also prize my few wild wolf photos, and the one time that I got super-lucky and shot a few slides of a wild bobcat. But the latter are pretty much unusable for painting, sadly - they’re simply reminders of a really wonderful, brief encounter.
May 27th, 2008 at 7:51 pm
The difference between wild and captive animals really came home to me when I was able to go to Kenya. I was watching zebras, which are a dime a dozen there, but what struck me was the way, always, at some level, everyone was Paying Attention. Of course, it was the presence of the predators. He who does not pay attention risks becoming a menu item. Compared to the wild ones, the zebras I’ve seen in zoos are essentially cows.
I also treasure my wild bear and wolf photos. They may be fuzzy and distant, but they put the animal in context and provide that memory of having seen them. I’ve got one decent wild bobcat photo. You can clearly see everything except…..the head (of course).
I do tend to do a monochrome underpainting, at least a loose one, to establish my drawing and overall value pattern before adding color. In my illustration classes at art school, one of the really useful things they taught us was a procedure which broke down the problem-solving process: thumbnails for overall composition and large masses; finished drawing: value study: color rough. And you were told to “save something for the finish”.
One doesn’t need to do every step every time, but the process is so great to have to fall back on if you get into trouble. It’s a traditional approach that someone with Rungius’ academic training would have been familiar with.
May 28th, 2008 at 10:14 am
at some level, everyone was Paying Attention.
That’s it precisely and the alertness is in their entire body — ready to move into action at a moment’s notice.
And it is true of both prey and predator because if the predators were not always alert, their dinner would get away.
From what i understand, Rungius actually spent a lot of time traipsing through wild areas.
back in those early days, artists were really a combination of things: naturalist, biologist, artist– all rolled into one. Audubon is another example. So is Olaus Murie, though he is usually not recognized as a wildlife artist, but his Animal Tracks book is chock full of sketches of animals, tracks (and scat!)
I believe it is precisely the knowledge of the animals AND of their habitat that really comes across in their artwork. And i also think that is what is sorely missing in most of what is called “wildlife art” today. Animals outside their habitat are not really “wild’ at all, in my opinion. The best wildlife art really puts you into the scene and makes you feel what the animal must have felt.
May 29th, 2008 at 3:33 am
In places where wild animals are not hunted, Kenya being one (not including poaching), it is much easier to observe animal behavior. Our wild ‘parks’ here also.
I do appreciate being able to go to places to take up close photos of animals. The reference photos are valuable. But the animals have no ‘fire in the belly’.
But what I was talking about is that the general public has lost its connection to the natural world. It is foreign and feared. So why would they value a wildlife painting if they do not value wildlife?
May 29th, 2008 at 8:24 am
I don’t think most of the public ever had any connection to begin with.
But I sure agree that it’s hard to value something that one has no connection with or personal stake in.
It also does not help that those of us who DO value wild places and wild animals are often branded as “elitist” (extremist, nutty, tree-hugger, {feel free to insert your own idiotic, ignorant term here}) “environmentalists” bent on “locking up” land and resources for our own personal use.
Of course, there is a bit of selfishness involved - -as there is in nearly everything — but it really DOES benefit the general public to have parks and nature preserves, though they may not even realize it.
The real irony is that the people who would destroy this stuff are the real elitists. They are in it STRICTLY for themselves: for the profit. But of course, they would give the wacky Adam Smithian argument that the economic gain that is good for the one is good for the many.