Bruno Dillen, who runs the art history website Artinthepicture.com, recently emailed me to tell me about a new animal art section on his website. I’ve not met Mr. Dillen before (ah, the power of the internet!). While the site appears to make its living by selling prints and ‘hand painted reproductions’ of the images, it has a wide selection of animal-themed work from the 1400s to the 20th century. Some of the masters that one would expect to find - Stubbs, Durer, Rosa Bonheur - are here, shown alongside work by M. C. Escher.
The stylistic and interpretive range is great fun to explore. It’s fascinating to compare a 1763 George Stubbs zebra to a 1944 modern art interpretation of one. Some personal favorites on the site: Toulouse-Lautrec’s “Artilleryman Saddling his Horse”; Rosa Bonheur’s “Doe & Fawn in a Thicket” [these look like red deer to me]; and of course Stubbs’ famous “Whistlejacket”.
The site lacks reference to recent masters of animal art, such as Kuhn, Rungius, and Kuhnert, so it’s quite incomplete in that area. But for surfing animal imagery in general art history, it’s interesting. One big plus is that there are a lot of Bonheur paintings on the site; since she’s been rather ignored by the generally chauvinist wildlife art historians, it’s nice to have a chance to explore more of her work.
To get there: www.artinthepicture.com/paintings/tags/animal/. Once you’re here, there are other tags at page bottom to continue your animal-art explorations (eg, clicking on “horse” got me to a Lady Godiva painting … for all you guy types out there).
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March 19th, 2009 at 4:39 am
Julie,
I have to agree with you about the neglect of Bonheur. When I was in the 8th grade my art teacher took a few of us to the Metropolitan in NY. When I walked into the room with the Horse Fair if was speachless and sat in front of it for at least an hour - my teacher thought I was lost. It was one of the inspirations, along with her, that made me want to be an artist. I have never lost my admiration for Bonheir’s work. Lucy Kemp-Welch is in the same boat.
I thoroughly enjoy your blog.
Thanks,
Yvonne
March 19th, 2009 at 5:38 am
Julie, thank you for the nice words about my website. As I’m always interested in learning about, to me, new artists, I’ve added Friedrich Wilhelm Kuhnert to the website as well. I might add the others as well if I find the time and resources.
March 19th, 2009 at 2:04 pm
Yvonne, what a wonderful note! I would love to see the “Horse Fair” in the flesh - it’s fairly large, isn’t it? what a masterful piece it is! I can’t understand why Bonheur has been so overlooked…unless it’s because she was born with mammary glands. I’ll never understand.
Bruno, you are welcome - we animal art addicts tend to know a lot about our own specialty, as the general art history establishment has overlooked animal art (as well as women artists)…something to do with animals being ‘lesser’ subject matter than figurative, landscape, or still life. Something else I’ll never understand - especially considering that animals were the very first things our species depicted in art.
Another animal art master for you to check out is Bruno Liljefors, BTW - an amazing painter, he painted life-size from memory. Whew….
March 20th, 2009 at 5:31 am
The Horse Fair is large - 15 or 16 feet wide I think. It really is an incredible piece of work. There is much to study there. The room has been roped off due to summer personnel shortages both times I have been lucky enough to go back so I have been really frustrated in that I couldn’t get in the room with it. I really want to study it through adult eyes not from a star struck teenager point of view. Oh well. Something to look forward to.