Carl Rungius in context

Magazine Antiques, Nov, 1999 by Lyle C. Gray, Eleanor Jones Harvey

Rungius's magazine work led to important commissions illustrating books, including The Deer Family of 1902 by Theodore Roosevelt and others, The Still Hunter of 1904 by Theodore S. Van Dyke, and Musk-ox, Bison,

Sheep and Goat of 1904, written by three prominent members of the Boone and Crockett Club: Caspar Whitney (1862-1929), the publisher and editor of Outing, George Bird Grinnell (1849-1938), the publisher and editor of Forest and Stream, and Owen Wister (1860-1938), the author of the western novel The Virginian, published in 1902. Illustrating this last book enabled Rungius to add new species of animals to his repertory, in many cases sketched from photographs, taxidermy specimens, and zoo animals.

Rungius's ability to accurately depict a number of species secured him a commission from Hornaday to supply the New York Zoological Society with what was initially one painting a year documenting a threatened species (see Pl. XIII). These paintings, executed between 1914 and 1934, were collectively entitled the Gallery of Wild Animals and adorned the administration building of the zoological society. The society specifically requested that in doing these paintings Rungius abandon his more impressionistic mature style in favor of his earlier, more precise renderings of animals, as the society wished to maintain scientific exactness in the depiction of threatened species. To this Rungius somewhat reluctantly agreed.(7)

Rungius always tended toward realism in his depictions of wildlife, but he also experimented with contemporary developments in bravura brushwork. Beginning in the 1890s he adopted a lighter palette and a more delicate touch, influenced by impressionism. These adaptations were specially well suited to his work in Wyoming, where the summer colors tended to be bleached tones of gray, green, and tan, occasionally relieved by pinpoints of intense red or orange wildflowers. His first impressions of Wyoming focused on its vast, treeless plains dotted with rock outcroppings and mountain ranges. He was not as concerned with the details of the landscape as he was with the precise depiction of animals. In particular he was enamored of the "fleetness, beauty and grace"(8) of the pronghorn antelope, which he documented in one of his most striking early works (see Pl. III). To sketch the elusive pronghorn he combined his skills with rifle and paint box, much as Bierstadt had done earlier in the century during his 1863 expedition to the American West.(9) Rungius developed a way of rigging a dead animal into a more lifelike position so that he might sketch it.(10) Using

a system of ropes, suspended from a cross pole, it [the animal] had been held in a natural position and had been stuffed with grass to give a normal size to the belly. After several pencil drawings Rungius made a color sketch.(11)

These field sketches were the basis for the finished canvases.

Rungius's later style, like Homer's, favored bold strokes of paint to shape forms and establish striking contrasts of color and texture. But beyond surface similarities both artists strove to capture a pivotal moment in which man is pitted against nature. Homer regarded his pair of paintings of 1900, Eastern Point, Prout's Neck (Pl. XIV) and West Point, Prout's Neck (also at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts), as among the finest he ever painted. This was in part due to his success in conveying the raw power of the ocean breaking on the rocky coastline. In these canvases he moves beyond the specifics of wave and shore to evoke a full range of experiences felt by the viewer faced with the powerful presence and unknown qualities of the sea. Rungius achieved similarly dramatic results pitting man as the unseen pursuer of unpredictable wild animals in the vertiginous setting of the American and Canadian Rockies. Dall Sheep (Pl. II), one element of a triptych, accentuates the precipitous, boulder strewn footing of the cliffs. These sheep, which are among the most elusive of big game, freeze as they rerum the viewers gaze. The resulting tension is endemic to the artist's best work.