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Vie des arts
Animals in ArtL. V. Randall
Numéro 17, noël 1959
URI : https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/55248ac
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Éditeur(s)La Société La Vie des Arts
ISSN0042-5435 (imprimé)1923-3183 (numérique)
Découvrir la revue
Citer cet articleRandall, L. V. (1959). Animals in Art. Vie des arts, (17), 52–59.
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A N I M A L S 1 n
ART L.V. RANDALL
/ . Engraved and hand coloured fable from a book on microscopic research, published in 1764 in Germany. Collecf ion L.V.R. Monfrea l
2. Init ial from illumin-nafed Ifal ian manuscript on parchmenf. About 1300 A.D.
mcipninn THE animal is nearest
to man in creation
and closely woven
into his life. The hunter,
the nomad, the agricultur-
er alike needed and used
it. Wha t is more, its im
penetrable mysterious na
ture has brought i t into
man's religious feeling
and thought. No wonder
then, that from the ear
liest days on, i t has play
ed a foremost part in the
realm of art, where we
formulate, interpret, and
try to solve the deeper
problems of our life.
About twelve thousand years before our t ime, the animal was the main, if not
the only theme in art ; why, we do not know for sure. The most plausible of the many
theories combines several motives : spontaneous desire to decorate objects, to make
images from nature and magical superstitions, still alive today with tribes who use
hunting and fishing talismans. Hence the image of animals, often pierced by arrows
or facing traps, promises succesful hunting; and in the 19th and 20th centuries still,
animal masks in ritual dances of people with primit ive cultures give hope for fert i l i ty,
rain and other blessings, (f igure 17).
The first of the great ancient cultures of historical date, the Egyptian culture,
takes, in its art, a dif ferent att i tude towards the animal; the Egyptian mind of that
period is directed towards the static and the periodically recurrent : day and night, the
seasons, the repetitious events in life. It is not concerned with the episode t ied to the
individual, to the single human being with its personal traits. Monuments of Egyptian
kings show often the names not of their own battles but of those fought by their pre
decessors, or enumerate names of barbarian kings defeited long before their t ime. It is
the event itself, victory and triumph of « the » king over his enemies which is
emphasized in Egyptian art, not a particular victory.
In analogy with such conception, the enigmatic phy
siognomy of the animal, which in our eyes shows a
lack of individual traits, seems never to alter through
out the ages. They remain, unlike human beings, un
changed through developments, and seem closer to
the eternal. This gives them their importance in
Egyptian art. The animal often represents a deity or
is itself a god. The falcon is the god Horus. Deities
are also represented with half human, half animal
features. Hathor, the goddess, is sometimes shown
as a cow, sometimes as a woman with a cow's head.
O r the sculptor gives her the head of a beautiful
woman with cow's ears. Similarly, in early Christian
art and still in the Middle Ages, three of the evan
gelists are shown either as men or as the animals which
are their attributes, eagle, lion and bull, and sometimes
we see their human figures with the animal heads. In
Egyptian hieroglyphs the animal becomes a sign in this
written language. Many magnificent small stone reliefs
have survived which are sculptors' studies of those
animals, which appear in ancient Egyptian script, and
which the artist had to cut in stone for the large
inscriptions on temples and tombs.
The Egyptians, in works of smallish size, and later,
in a more monumental style, the Assyrians, with their
grandiose stone reliefs of the 9th and 8th century, B.C.
have typif ied the representation of animals which,
while utterly true to nature in every detail, are never
theless stylised and simplified in the most sensitive and
beautiful manner.
Greek art idealises its objects, not only the human
body and face, but also animals. Greek horses, sculp-
3. Byzantine Brome Lion. About 1100 A.D. Montreal Museum of Fine Arfs.
4. Ex voto Horse and Rider : Terracotta. Greek. Sixth century B.C. Col lect . L.V.R. Montreal .
5. Peruvian Pottery. About 200 A.D. Col lection L.V.R. Montreal .
tured, or painted on vases, after having passed in the
8th and 7th century B.C. through a period of geome
trical simplification are the prototypes of the noble,
perfectly beautiful animal which the horse can be.
(fig. 6). The Romans are the first people to be particular
ly interested in the episode, in the specific. Their bat
tle reliefs are historical reports, contain portraits true
to life, of emperors, consuls, and generals. Their por
t ra i t busts are realistic studies of human individual
character. Their animals, often domestic, dogs and
cats, even mice, in stone and bronze are shown with
great realism, not in a typical, generalizing form and
att i tude, but as seen on a special episodical occasion;
the mouse eating a piece of cheese, etc.
Christian art is the first to introduce true symbols
in art. The fish is in no way identif ied with Christ as
the Egyptian falcon is with the god Horus, but is the
symbol, the sign of Christ. The Apostles are often
shown as lambs. A deer drinking from a source is the
symbol for the Christian soul thirsting for the Gospels.
The source represents the fountain of life, itself a
Christian symbol. The picture of the Deacock stands
for the immortality of the soul.
It is only since the Renaissance of the 15th cen
tury A .D . that the animal for its own sake, without de
corative or symbolistic pretext becomes the theme for
the artists ( f ig . I I , 13). Al l sorts of animals populate
the scene for religious pictures; St. Jerome in the de
sert is shown with a lion, with birds and snakes and
scorpions; St. Eustache is shown in a wood full with
game ; deer, hares, and a great variety of birds, and so
on. Animals appear in portraits; Holbein paints a lady
6. Greek Horse. Terracotta. About 2nd century B.C. Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.
7. Handle of ceremonial staff. Painted wood. Egyptian. About 1350 B.C. Col lection L.V.R. Montreal .
H
' • I ' • • • • » - • • ••.
• > • • » • . % • • • « i
'.V,
with a squirrel on her arm, Botticelli, a portrai t of
Guiliano di Medici with a dove. Later, in the 17th and
18th centuries mainly, the animal is painted for its
own sake. Stubbs, the magnificent English painter of
horses, Delacroix, and others paint again and again
animals. In our time the American Morris Graves crea
tes beautiful animal paintings. An American sculptor,
Flannagan, chisels powerful animals from stone. Other
great artists like Picasso, Klee, ( f ig . 10) etc. have oc
casionally represented animals in pictures, drawings or
graphic technique or even in sculpture and pottery.
Also in the art of the book, the animal plays an
important part. Early manuscripts of religious and
secular character show grotesque ornamental animals
for the embellishment of the written pages, ( f ig . 2 ) .
Later, zoological books, illustrated in the tradit ional
techniques of ' the woodcut, engraving and lithography,
are created by specialists who, while concerned only
with scientific illustration, become great artists in their
own right, ( f ig . I ) . It is particularly in the 18th
and 19th centuries that such books are produced in
great numbers, the finest, in France and England. In
the 19th century, the Englishman Gould painted du
ring a lifetime the birds of all five continents and we
can see them in beautiful folio volumes with innumera
ble hand-coloured plates. The American, Audubon, is
well-known for his beautiful « Birds of America ». In
our day Picasso has illustrated Button's 'Natural His
tory' in a remarkably powerful manner. W e could con
tinue endlessly.
In all the decorative arts the animal appears very
frequently. For textiles, pottery, wood-carving, metal-
work, the artisan selects again and again animal shapes
to make his work attract ive.
An exhibition at the Montreal Museum of Fine
Arts tries to give at least a general cross-section of
animals in art. It covers all cultures from the Far East to
the Americas. It covers all times, prehistoric and his
toric.
11. Albrecht Durer. Squirrels. 1512. Gouache. Collection L.V.R. Montreal .
12. Parrot Water Vessel. Terracotta. Mexico. About 1300 A.D. Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.
13. Toad. Bronze. Andrea Riccio. Florence. Sixteenth century. Col lect ion L.V.R. Montreal .
14. Shoulder poncho. Feathers. Peru. 1000-1500 A.D. Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.
No exhibition on this subject could be nearly
complete. The field is too vast. But it can provide an
idea of the various points of view from which artists
have created images of animals : so we see here as
sembled animals in context with superstition and reli
gion, we observe the great variety in the use of ani
mals in the decorative arts : objects both for prac
tical ( f ig . 5, 12) and ceremonial ( f ig . 7, 8, 18) use
in the shape of animals; examples of the innumerable
form in which animals are used as basis for orna
mental designs ( f ig . 5, 14, 19). W e see heraldic ani
mals. W e see animals, not existing in nature, but pro
duced by human imagination : chimeras of the Middle
Ages, and of early historical periods, from Assyria of
* M f
# i / w • * *
r &- r v ' ~ ) ' '' 15. Lama. Drawing by 11 year old
child. Pupil of A r t School. Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.
16. Head of Anubis, one of funeral gods. Painted wood. About 1350 B.C. Col lect ion L.V.R. Montreal .
the 8th century B.C., from early Far East culture, China
in particular. Animals in zoological, scientific illustra
tions are shown, and many animals created just for the
love of the subject by great and minor artists, — pure
works of art for art s sake. We even see in this context
animals painted by children ( f ig . 15).
When we ask why the animal plays such an im
portant part in works of art, the answer can perhaps
only be found in the introductory sentences of this
sketch; because of the closeness of the animal to man
and his life and, we may hope, perhaps because of an
inborn love of man for the animal, his closest compa
nion in creation.
, I V " A?
1 ' \ l
17. Mask. F rog? head. British Columbia. Wood Nineteenth century. Courtesy of the Museum of Primitive Ar t , New York.
18. Bronze f inial Ram Head. Afr ica. Benin. Middle eighteenth century ?. Courtesy of the Museum of Primitive Ar t , New York.
19. Ring. Persia. Achemenid Dynasty. About 500 B.C. Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.
20. Boar. Ceramic. 1955. François Raty. France. Collection Gérard Beaulieu, Montreal.
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