Wildlife Art facts

Wildlife art, art on the subject of wild animals and birds, is a popular area of the arts. Some of the very earliest artworks were on this subject.

Cave paintings from the prehistoric age often included wild animals and birds which were food or danger at the time and so conceptualized very differently from our current perspective on them. Sculptures from the ancient world also often include animals and birds.

As people’s attitudes and perspectives on the natural world changed, so did the depictions of wildlife in art. An initial change was the shift from living in close daily contact with wildlife, to later separating the human world from the natural world as much as possible. This is mirrored in the almost complete absence of wildlife in art of the period. Religious perspectives at the time were focused on the human world and mostly ignored the natural world.

Later, in the romantic art period, animals were used in the typical emotional conceptualizations of the time. For example, tigers were often represented as evil animals with downcast shameful gaze, contrasting with lions shown as noble beasts with head held high.

The boundaries between the human and natural worlds were often represented in art at this time such as paintings of a wild lion attacking a domestic horse.

More recently wildlife art has become a more popular subject and is greatly loved. Landseer’s stag paintings were among the most popular of all artworks in the Victorian era and are still popular today, and Audubon’s bird books were considered the finest picture books ever published.

Currently, wildlife art is a popular subject. Nature is loved as a subject in its own right now, and wildlife art reflects this interest by showing wild birds and animals in their natural environments. Conservation is also a big issue these days with some wildlife art created for the express purpose of increasing public awareness of the importance of conservation.

Learn more about Wildlife Art, and see the paintings described in this article. Stop by Thomas Goldman’s site where you can find out all about wild animal and bird art.