Art depicting wild animals or birds is called wildlife art. Some of mans earliest artworks depicted wildlife, and it is a popular are of art today.
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.
The evolution of people's attitudes to wild animals and birds is clearly reflected in wildlife art. After their initial lives close to wild animals, humans grew to separate themselves from the natural world, and this is reflected in the fact that wildlife was mostly absent from long periods of western art. Religious views at the time ignored the natural world and focused on the human realm.
The romantic era used wildlife in its typical emotional representations of the world. A typical example is a proud noble lion contrasted with an evil-looking tiger with eyes downcast in shame.
Around this time wildlife in art was also often about the boundaries between the human world and the natural world, rather than a view of nature in its own right. For example, there was art depicting a 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.
Conservation of nature is currently a hot topic and many wildlife paintings are created to increase public awareness of the important issues of conservation of nature. Also nature is of great interest to many people as a subject in its own right, and wildlife art reflects this interest showing wild animals and birds in their natural habitat. - 30447
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.
The evolution of people's attitudes to wild animals and birds is clearly reflected in wildlife art. After their initial lives close to wild animals, humans grew to separate themselves from the natural world, and this is reflected in the fact that wildlife was mostly absent from long periods of western art. Religious views at the time ignored the natural world and focused on the human realm.
The romantic era used wildlife in its typical emotional representations of the world. A typical example is a proud noble lion contrasted with an evil-looking tiger with eyes downcast in shame.
Around this time wildlife in art was also often about the boundaries between the human world and the natural world, rather than a view of nature in its own right. For example, there was art depicting a 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.
Conservation of nature is currently a hot topic and many wildlife paintings are created to increase public awareness of the important issues of conservation of nature. Also nature is of great interest to many people as a subject in its own right, and wildlife art reflects this interest showing wild animals and birds in their natural habitat. - 30447
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Want to see the paintings referred to above, and find out more about Wildlife Art? then visit Thomas Goldman's great site which is the definitive guide to wildife art.
