About American Wildlife Art
American Wildlife Artists
American Wildlife Art is one of the first publications to examine wildlife art and the artists under the historical and cultural lens that illuminates the purpose and evolution of the genre. David J. Wagner’s sweeping narrative begins with the colonial art of the New World and continues to the post-modern wildlife art paintings and sculptures of today. His account brings to life the genre’s history by focusing on the most influential wildlife artists, artworks, contexts, and trends, within the context of the major epochs of American history.
American Wildlife Art features artwork from over forty pivotal artists from the last four centuries.
John White
"Excellent examples of early American wildlife art are rare and hard to find. Without question, the work of John White is the best. As early as 1584, on expeditions organized by Sir Walter Raleigh to establish a colonial foothold for England on the edge of North America, White created subtle watercolor drawings of New World wildlife." --Excerpt from American Wildlife Art
Mark Catesby
"American wildlife art from later colonial times—work produced during the Enlightenment—is represented at its best by the didactic, hand-colored etchings of Mark Catesby, which were published for scientific documentation and the study of natural history. Because John White and Mark Catesby produced a body of work that is the earliest as well as the highest quality for its time, their art and stories constitute the first chapter of American wildlife art." --Excerpt from American Wildlife Art
Alexander Wilson
"Wildlife artist Alexander Wilson was born in 1766 near the textile center of Paisley, Scotland, not far from Glasgow. He made many contributions to the story of American wildlife art. Alexander Wilson enlarged the scope of its exploration and discovery, documentation, and enterprise; initiated printing and publishing of wildlife art on North American soil; established ornithology as a branch of the biological science of natural history in America; and was the first to do all of this in the new nation of the United States. He also acted as a catalyst for the unsurpassed accomplishments of John James Audubon." --Excerpt from American Wildlife Art
John James Audubon
"John James Audubon, perhaps the best-known American wildlife artist, left behind an incredible legacy. In all, Audubon portrayed some two thousand birds and hundreds of mammals and plants. Through his artistic innovations and accomplishments, Audubon led American wildlife art out of the empirical aesthetic of the Enlightenment and into the emotional, entertaining, and freer aesthetic of romanticism. Audubon was a visionary in observing and expressing concern that wildlife depletion went hand-in-hand with national expansion. Above all else, however, Audubon was the gifted artist and inquiring naturalist who was the force behind 'Birds of America,' the greatest publication in the history of American wildlife art." --Excerpt from American Wildlife Art
Arthur F. Tait
"Self-taught as a painter and a printer, wildlife artist Arthur F. Tait had come to America looking for opportunities because few existed for emerging artists in the United Kingdom at that time. Although Tait was adept at painting and printing bucolic landscapes and images of domestic animals and hunting parties, he was apparently not interested in natural history and unaware of Audubon. Although John James Audubon is the most recognized individual in American wildlife art history, Arthur Tait superseded him almost immediately after Audubon’s death in 1851 by extending American wildlife art in an entirely new direction. Audubon had documented birds and mammals as classes of wildlife for science. Tait, on the other hand, focused on species such as white-tailed deer, bear, grouse, mallards, quail, and trout as game for sportsmen, and families of animals—especially domestic and wild birds—as allegorical subjects with sentimental meaning. In addition, Tait extended the field of American wildlife art by placing wildlife in replete landscapes like those painted by members of the Hudson River school." --Excerpt from American Wildlife Art
Edward Kemeys
"Edward Kemeys initiated a diversification of American wildlife art. He added
sculpture as a format, depth as a dimension, and bronze as a medium, for
example, to the paintings and prints created by artists such as John James
Audubon, Arthur Tait, and their predecessors. Kemeys also diversified American
wildlife art by modeling wolves and other predators—alone and with their prey—in addition to nonpredatory species, particularly those that inhabited the
American West. Unlike painters who portrayed wildlife
in styles suited for science or sport, Kemeys worked in an impressionistic style
suited to capturing behaviors, expressions, and animal traits through sculpture.
As a consequence of this approach, Kemeys loosened the grip that realism held
on American wildlife art, just as the impressionists had loosened the grip that
realism had had on Western art since the Renaissance."
--Excerpt from American Wildlife Art
Carl Rungius
"Carl Rungius modernized American wildlife painting by freeing it from a style and technique of tight delineation and brushwork. Like Cézanne, who was influenced by classical balance, order, and proportion, Rungius constructed his signature paintings as carefully as if he were building them from blocks of color. Rungius fit details together to create structural solidity and stability. He sacrificed individual details to design as a whole, concentrating on basic shapes and overall composition and design, which he painted impressionistically in broad brushstrokes. Louis Fuertes and Carl Rungius both modernized and professionalized American wildlife art, each in his own way. As evidenced by the survey of America’s leading wildlife artists that is cited in the preface to this book, the art of Fuertes and Rungius has not only endured the test of time but has remained a standard of excellence throughout the twentieth century." --Excerpt from American Wildlife Art
Louis Agassiz Fuertes
"Louis Fuertes and Carl Rungius were two of the twentieth-century’s most influential artists.
Though they diered distinctively in their approach, they
modernized and professionalized American wildlife art. They were also responsible for influencing
most of the century’s other influential wildlife artists, particularly Robert Kuhn, Lynn Bogue Hunt,
George Miksch Sutton, and Roger Tory Peterson."
--Excerpt from American Wildlife Art
Bob Kuhn
"A later maker of painterly sporting images who began as a magazine illustrator was Bob Kuhn (b. 1920). Kuhn prepared for his career at Pratt Institute’s School of Art and Design in Brooklyn. For thirty years, he illustrated outdoor sportsmen magazines, including Field & Stream and Outdoor Life." --Excerpt from American Wildlife Art
The Federal Duck Stamp Program
"Premiums, magazines, and other formats aside, perhaps no other manifestation of American wildlife art had a greater impact during the first half of the twentieth century than the federal duck stamp program. This program not only institutionalized ecological ideology, but it also enlarged the economy of scale of American wildlife art by mandating, as a form of excise tax, the purchase of stamps that contained sporting wildlife art images by thousands of American sportsmen." --Excerpt from American Wildlife Art
Decorative Waterfowl Carving
"Decorative carving as we know it today emerged from the artistry of early carvers like Perdew, who brought a higher aesthetic level to decoys used by hunters and combined their artistry with the practice of marketing miniatures. Although there were countless other decoy carvers, most of whom remain anonymous, among the most influential were Anthony Elmer Crowell (1862– 1952) of Cape Cod, and two brothers named Lemuel T. Ward and Steve Ward, from Crisfield, Maryland." --Excerpt from American Wildlife Art
Stanley Meltzoff
"An important and altogether dierent development in American wildlife art emerged a decade after mid-century: the painting of fish from photographs taken underwater. Credit for this development belongs to Stanley Meltzoff (1917–2006)." --Excerpt from American Wildlife Art
Ray Harm
"While still attending art school, Harm became staff artist for the Cleveland Audubon Society. This
experience introduced him to the work of John James Audubon and Louis Agassiz Fuertes, focused his
attention on birds, and made him realize the depth to which he and the public enjoyed their beauty."
--Excerpt from American Wildlife Art
Ray Harm, along with entrepreneur Wood Hannah, went on to found Ray Harm Wildlife Art, a very
successful wildlife art publishing company which produced limited edition wildlife art prints of Ray
Harm’s artwork.
Robert Bateman
"Robert Bateman became America’s most influential living wildlife artist because his aesthetic went beyond the didacticism of natural history image making, the rich and romantic painterly brushstrokes of classic sporting art, and impression—and also because his aesthetic was purposefully integrated with ecological ideology and the enterprise of publishing. A prime example of this integration is 'Mossy Branches—Spotted Owl'. It was painted by Bateman in 1989 and published by Mill Pond Press in 1990." --Excerpt from American Wildlife Art
Kent Ullberg
"The other principal American wildlife artist who has worked in the post-
modern idiom is sculptor Kent Ullberg (b. 1945)...From 1975 to 1980, Ullberg
established himself as a sculptor of American wildlife by producing
competent and strong bronze sculptures in a style that was quite traditional. By
1981, his work transcended traditional American wildlife art when he unveiled a
sculpture that embodied new possibilities." --Excerpt from American Wildlife Art
Recent news
New York, New York — Internationally-known wildlife sculptor Kent Ullberg
will be honored by the National Sculpture Society on May 17, 2008. Ullberg
will receive the Society’s Henry Hering Memorial Medal for Art and
Architecture at a black tie honors and awards dinner in New York City, part of
the organization’s annual Sculpture Celebration Weekend.
The Henry Hering Medal is considered to be the most important award
given for sculpture in architecture. It is given for outstanding collaboration between architect, owner and sculptor in the distinguished use of sculpture
in an architectural project. The award, which is not given every year, but only
as warranted, is in recognition of Ullberg’s monumental work, the 'Spirit of
Nebraska’s Wilderness', done in conjunction with the First National Bank
headquarters building in downtown Omaha.