ANIMAL
PORTRAITURE
[Illustration]
ANIMAL
PORTRAITURE
BEING
FIFTY STUDIES
BY
WILHELM KUHNERT
ACCOMPANIED BY A SERIES OF
ORIGINAL ARTICLES
BY
R. LYDEKKER
F.R.S.
[Illustration]
London
FREDERICK WARNE & Cº.
& New York
(All rights reserved)
COPYRIGHT, 1912
BY
FREDERICK WARNE & CO.
FOREWORD
Wilhelm Kuhnert is the greatest animal-painter of our day. There has
never been a more excellent colourist or more skilful draughtsman of
shape and action; and there is none with a more masterly touch or more
unmistakable individuality. There is no misunderstanding his intention.
The lifelike likeness of the animal set in its local atmosphere is his
predominating endeavour. His range is of the widest, and his subjects
all come alike to him; he has no preference for any particular group or
family, but draws them all, vertebrate and invertebrate, with power,
truth, and sympathy.
With a knowledge of the very soul of the animal such as few possess,
his pictures are replete with insight into character and its vivid
expression, and fascinate even those who may not adequately appreciate
their wonderful accuracy. “We who have travelled,” as Mr. G. J.
Millais remarks, “do not need to be told that his studies from nature
are correct. His lions, elephants, zebras, and antelopes are so real
that we feel we are gazing at them on the plains of East Africa. The
landscapes are simple but intense; sunlight is there, and the trees and
grass are just those that grow in the habitat of these species. Kuhnert
has, as it were, got inside the very skin of African life, and draws
you insensibly within the charmed circle.”
In a gallery his works at once arrest attention by their vigorous
realism. There is life within the frame of whatever he paints. He is
the Frans Hals of animal portraiture.
He was born at Oppeln in Silesia on the 28th of September 1865, and
during his student days at the Academy of Berlin, was influentially
advised to devote himself to animal painting, for which he had
evidently a special gift. He began, however, as a portrait painter, and
from his pictures, particularly those of African life, it is clear
that in that branch of art he would have distinguished himself; but
fortunately, he could not withstand his inclination. From a painter
of portraits of men and women he developed into a portrait-painter
of animals, finding his subjects alive by the countryside and in
menageries and zoological gardens, and then seeking them farther
afield in Africa and Southern Asia, where he worked assiduously in
forest and jungle. Fifty of his characteristic studies are included
in this book, and in them, as in all, the blending of the animal with
the surroundings is remarkable, and the faithfulness with which the
landscape, painted on the spot, has been rendered is apparent at a
glance.
Search as we will we shall find nothing truer to nature than such
triumphs of art as the Polar Bear amid the Arctic ice, the hairy Tigers
by the snowy mountain lake, the slender Flamingoes in the evening
landscape, the Silver Gull sweeping above the ocean waves, the Black
Swans as an idyll of the pool, the Capercaillie posturing in the
morning light, and many other masterpieces herein.
This collection, like that of the Kuhnert Exhibition at the Fine Art
Society’s Gallery in Bond Street, is arranged purely on artistic lines;
no attempt has been made to classify the subjects in zoological order.
It is an album of animal portraiture as fully representative of the
artist as possible. The pictures have been photographically reproduced
in colours from the oil paintings, and the imitation is so exact that
little of the charm of the originals has been lost.