Animal Portraiture

Part 1

ANIMAL PORTRAITURE

ANIMAL PORTRAITURE

BEING FIFTY STUDIES BY WILHELM KUHNERT

ACCOMPANIED BY A SERIES OF ORIGINAL ARTICLES

BY R. LYDEKKER F.R.S.

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.

CONTENTS

PLATE PAGE

I. THE LION (Felis Leo) 1

II. THE MANCHURIAN TIGER (Felis tigris mongolica) 4

III. THE SEAL (Phoca vitulina) 6

IV. THE ELK (Alces machlis) 8

V. THE CAPERCAILLIE (Tetrao urogallus) 10

VI. THE SQUIRREL (Sciurus vulgaris) 12

VII. THE ROE-DEER (Capreolus caprea) 14

VIII. THE REINDEER (Rangifer tarandus) 16

IX. THE DEFASSA WATERBUCK (Cobus defassa) 18

X. THE HARE (Lepus europæus) 20

XI. THE POLAR BEAR (Ursus maritimus) 22

Part 2

XII. THE MANDRILL (Maimon mormon) 24

XIII. THE WOLF (Canis lupus) 26

XIV. THE WILD CAT (Felis catus) 28

XV. THE RED KANGAROO (Macropus rufus) 30

XVI. THE BLUE ROLLER (Coracias garrulus) 32

XVII. THE BITTERN (Botaurus stellaris) 34

XVIII. THE KAFIR CROWNED CRANE (Balearica chrysopelargus) 36

XIX. THE SILVER GULL (Larus argentatus) 38

XX. THE GREAT HORNED OWL (Bubo ignavus) 40

XXI. THE FLAMINGO (Phœnicopterus roseus) 42

XXII. THE NILE CROCODILE (Crocodilus niloticus) 44

XXIII. THE WHITE-HANDED GIBBON (Hylobates lar) 46

XXIV. THE ABYSSINIAN GREEN MONKEY (Cercopithecus æthiops) 48

XXV. THE FOX (Canis vulpes or Vulpes alopex) 50

XXVI. THE BROWN BEAR (Ursus arctus) 52

XXVII. THE PINE-MARTEN (Mustela martes) 54

XXVIII. THE LEOPARD (Felis pardus) 56

XXIX. THE LYNX (Felis (Lynx) lynx) 58

XXX. THE INDIAN RHINOCEROS (Rhinoceros unicornis) 60

XXXI. THE BISON (Bos (Bison) bonasus) 62

XXXII. THE GAZELLE (Gazella dorcas) 64

XXXIII. THE MOUFLON (Ovis musimon) 66

XXXIV. THE RED DEER (Cervus elaphus) 68

XXXV. THE BEAVER (Castor fiber) 70

XXXVI. THE MARMOT (Arctomys marmotta) 72

XXXVII. THE HAMSTER (Cricetus frumentarius) 74

XXXVIII. THE DUCKBILL OR PLATYPUS (Ornithorhynchus anatinus) 76

XXXIX. THE SPINY ANT-EATER OR ECHIDNA (Tachyglossus aculeatus) 78

Part 3

XL. THE BLACK SWAN (Cygnus atratus) 80

XLI. THE BUSTARD (Otis tarda) 82

XLII. THE SOMALI OSTRICH (Struthio molybdophanes) 84

XLIII. THE PIED HORNBILL (Buceros bicornis) 86

XLIV. THE BLUE MACAW (Ara cærulea or Ara ararauna) 88

XLV. THE MANDARIN DUCK (Æx galerita) 90

XLVI. THE HERON (Ardea cinerea) 92

XLVII. THE GREAT SPOTTED WOODPECKER (Dendrocopus major) 94

XLVIII. THE SENEGAL PARROT (Pæocephalus senegalus) 96

XLIX. THE GOLDFINCH (Carduelis elegans) 98

L. THE RAZORBILL OR AUK (Alca torda) 100

THE LION

(Felis leo)

The lion, undoubtedly, owes his title of “king of beasts” to the flowing mane with which his head and fore-quarters are adorned, as this confers upon him a dignity and grandeur of appearance entirely lacking in his maneless partner. Without his mane it is, indeed, more than questionable whether a lion would not be outclassed in style by a tiger. As it is, however, the lion, at all events so far as appearance goes, has an undisputed claim to his royal title; the magnificent mien of his draped head and shoulders, his bold, imperious eye, the powerful build of his lithe body, and his resounding roar of defiance, presenting the very ideal of supreme strength and sovereignty.

The tawny coat, which varies in tint from greyish or yellowish brown to yellow, is evidently intended to harmonise with the dry grasses and the yellow sand of the semi-desert tracts which form the favourite haunts of the lion; and this is confirmed by the fact that the newborn cubs are mottled with dark brown, thus indicating their descent from a species with a mottled or spotted coat adapted to a different environment. Indeed, Somali lions frequently retain traces of these spots, more especially in the female; and in German East Africa there exists a race of the lion in which both sexes are more or less fully and distinctly spotted.

In popular estimation the lion is inseparably connected with Africa, where it formerly ranged from one end of the continent to the other, although it has long since disappeared from most parts of Tunis and Algeria, as well as from Cape Colony. As a matter of fact, Felis leo is as much an Asiatic as an African animal; while in the time of Xenophon it was probably found so far west as Thrace and Macedonia. Earlier still, that is to say in prehistoric times, its range included the greater part of temperate Europe, not excepting the British Isles. Unlike the tiger, however, the lion never inhabited the countries to the east of the Bay of Bengal, nor penetrated to the swamps of Lower Bengal itself, which are unsuited to its habits. Even so late as the Mutiny, lions were to be met with over a considerable tract in central India; although they are nowadays restricted to that district of Kathiawar, known as the Gir, where they survive only by protection. In the valleys of the Euphrates and Tigris, as well as in parts of Persia, lions are still to be met with; but how numerous they are in these countries is difficult to ascertain.

In Africa lions appear to be most abundant in the British, German, and Portuguese eastern provinces, in some districts of which they seem bolder and more prone to attack human beings than in many other parts of the continent. In Somaliland, where they are smaller and greyer than usual, their number has been greatly reduced of late years. The handsomest lions of all are those with dark brown or black manes; but in some parts of the country, at all events, black-maned lions do not form a distinct race, as dark and light maned cubs may be found in the same litter.

Although the skulls of the two species present considerable differences, a lioness, apart from the absence of stripes, is not unlike a tiger in general appearance; and it has long been a question whether the lion or the tiger is the more powerful animal, although the balance of opinion seems to be in favour of the tiger’s claim to superiority in this respect. Certain it is, that the lion is much the more noisy animal of the two; a tiger never roaring in the persistent manner characteristic of the lion. The impression caused by the lion’s roar appears to depend greatly on the idiosyncrasy of the listener and the circumstances under which it is heard. Very noteworthy is the fact that the roar of the two species is essentially similar in character.

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