San Antonio’s Briscoe Western Art Museum next month will become the latest host of the touring exhibition “Survival of the Fittest: Envisioning Wildlife and Wilderness with the Big Four.” The exhibition comes from The National Museum of Wildlife art in Wyoming in collaboration with the Netherlands’ Rijksmuseum. The paintings featured in the show are all by four European masters of wildlife painting: Richard Friese, Wilhelm Kuhnert, Bruno Lilijefors and Carl Rungius. The exhibition organizers have dubbed the painters the “Big Four,” a moniker intended to reference the “big five” animals safari-goers hope to see: lion, leopard, elephant, buffalo and rhino.
“Survival of the Fittest” will be on view at the Briscoe from June 14 through Sept. 8.
The title references Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of the Species, which presented novel ideas becoming more widespread at the time of these painters’ careers. The publication also changed how people from Western cultures understood their relationship with wildlife. The four painters represented in the exhibition traveled the world extensively for their art. This is significant because they were the first European painters to paint wildlife subjects in their natural habitats rather than in captivity. Realism was somewhat of a new goal for these painters but impressionist elements put the animal subjects into focus.
Alongside the 45 works featured in the exhibition, the Briscoe will feature eight by Robert “Bob” Frederick Kuhn, one of the most prolific American wildlife artists, who was greatly influenced by the Big Four.
Additionally, the Briscoe will display taxidermy Cape buffalo, Dall sheep, javelina, bison, Scimitar oryx, turkey, elk and pheasant on loan from the Greg Kowalski Family & Salt Creek Ranch. There also will also be a drawing lab activity and hands-on opportunity to see wildlife’s fur and tracks up close. $35, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Thursday through Monday, June 14-Sept. 8, Briscoe Western Art Museum, 210 W. Market St., (210) 299-4499, briscoemuseum.org.
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This article appears in May 1-14, 2024.