How to Show Pictures to Children/Chapter 8
VIII
ANIMAL PICTURES
From time immemorial children have loved animals, as pets and playfellows, as toys, as heroes of nursery tales, and as the subject of pictures. Without trying to analyze the psychological reasons, we all accept the fact. When other resources fail in amusing a child, we are always glad to fall back on this one absolutely sure subject of interest. In the school and in the home, animal pictures are much used to combine amusement and instruction. The teacher takes them to illustrate nature lessons, and the mother finds them helpful in pointing many a moral. One cannot begin too early to enlist the child’s sympathy with the brute creation.
What constitutes a good animal picture? Correct drawing, certainly, but this is not enough. The animal must seem to be alive. He must show, too, his distinguishing characteristics. We know by his looks what manner of beast he is, gentle or fierce, sly, heavy or fleet-footed. It requires no mean ability to produce a real work of animal art. It means a faithful study of the nature and habits of the animal, and a special aptitude on the part of the artist. Two common faults are conspicuous in much of the animal art given to children. One is stiffness, or lack of vitality: apparently some illustrators do all their work from natural history collections. The other is the humanizing of the animal character. This quality is doubtless the logical outcome of animal folk-lore, which attributes human sentiments to wild creatures. If we are zealous for good art, we must look out for these faults when making our selections.
In the childhood of the race, as in the childhood of the individual, animals were the favorite art subject, as we see in the ancient sculpture of various peoples. Centuries before the age of painting, the figure decorations of temples and palaces consisted largely of lions and horses. Critics still visit the British museum to marvel at the lion hunt so realistically depicted on an Assyrian bas-relief, and the noble cavalcade of horses forming the frieze of the Parthenon. The best modern animal painters have something to learn from these. The painters of the early Christian centuries had very little idea of animal art. As their subjects were chiefly religious, animals were mere accessories to them, represented with childlike crudeness. In the old Nativity scenes the ox and the ass, standing (or kneeling) beside the manger, look like the wooden toys of a Noah’s ark, and the horses in the procession of the Magi, or in the Crucifixion scenes, are stiff wooden models covered with gorgeous trappings. Only once in a while some painter with a keener eye for street scenes would catch a child with a pet dog and smuggle him into the corner of his picture. You find such a group in a great fresco by Botticelli in the Sistine Chapel, and another in Titian’s famous Presentation of the Virgin, as well as in his Ecce Homo. But these are exceptions. It was late in the history of painting when the animal came into his own, when the perfection of technique made every branch of art possible. We may date the beginning of modern animal art from the seventeenth century Dutch school. From this time on, the most mediocre artist could make a presentable animal picture. But it is only now and then that an artist has attained high distinction in the subject. There is perhaps a general idea that the animal world is not quite worthy the entire life devotion of a master, but a few have forcibly refuted this error and their work reveals undreamed-of possibilities in this direction. When you put the lion of the ten-cent picture book beside the lion of Barye, you see the difference between representing the outer skin and the real leonine nature. One is a stuffed museum specimen, and the other is the king of beasts.
The child’s first animal pictures are single figures, as are his first pictures of children. The simple object, without accessories, appeals directly to him, and is most casily understood. Of course, it would be impossible to make a complete collection of single animal figures from masterpieces of art, but one can get a goodly number of subjects from Landseer and Rosa Bonheur. Landseer’s Newfoundland, and the head My Dog are good examples. Some fine animal heads are among the works of Rosa Bonheur, as the shepherd’s dog of the Wallace collection, the mastiff, Flambau, and the companion subjects 
A Distinguished Member of the Humane Society
National Gallery, London
The child’s first favorites are his domestic pets, the dog, the cat, and the bird. Next come the farm animals which the kindergarteners describe as the child’s friends, the hens which give him eggs to eat, and the cow which gives him milk to drink, the sheep which give their wool for his clothes, the horse which carries him to and fro, and the oxen which draw his heavy burdens. Then come the creatures of the woods, the rabbits, squirrels, fox and deer, the beasts of the jungle, the lion and the tiger, the strange creatures of polar regions and the mythical monsters of old poetry and legend.
All children are delighted with pictures of children with their pets, like Hoecker’s little Dutch girl with a kitten, who has won so many child friends. Such pictures are not strictly animal art, but often their chief charm to children is the pet — the first thing to exclaim over as they fall upon the picture with rapture. Many portrait painters have represented their juvenile sitters with their pets, notably Velasquez. The Prince Baltasar Carlos on his pony illustrates almost every quality we desire in a child’s picture. We hardly know which is more charming, the sleek little animal with his plump round body or the joyous child astride him. The same young prince with his hunting dog is also a notable work in the Prado Museum. There is tremendous latent power in that big, lazy-looking creature lying beside his young master. Van Dyck several times painted his Prince Charles with a dog, but the animal is rather a decorative accessory than a live and interesting creature. Reynolds treated the child’s canine friends with more sympathy. The spaniel which little Miss Bowles holds in a choking embrace captivates us with his bright eyes, while the delightful poodle over which the baby Princess Sophia creeps divides favor with his young mistress. A lovely subject originated by Murillo is that of the child St. John Baptist with a lamb. It was this saint, as will be remembered, who referred to the Saviour as the “lamb of God,” and for this reason it became a fixed tradition in sacred art to make the lamb a distinguishing mark of the saint. The idea is very pretty when used as Murillo used it to make the gentle little creature a playmate for the child. There are at least four pictures of this subject.
The child passes gradually from single figures of animals, and pictures of children with animal pets, to more elaborate compositions showing the many-sided life of the animal. It is only by multiplying examples that one can understand how many poses an animal can assume, or what variety of motions he is capable of. The statuesque pose of Landseer’s Newfoundland is quite a different thing from the relaxed figure of the Sleeping Bloodhound. A majestic monumental lion is as far removed as possible from the fierce writhing and struggling beasts of Rubens’s mighty scenes of the Lion Hunt. There are fifteen of these wonderful pictures. The royal dignity of Landseer’s Monarch of the Glen is in striking contrast to the tragic agony of the fallen hero in the Hunted Stag 
MISS BOWLES
animals is tenderly set forth by our William Morris Hunt, in the Belated Kid and Twin Lambs of the Boston Museum. It is a revelation in the life of the fox to see him in Winslow Homer’s picture, Winter (Pennsylvania Academy), speeding over the field of drifted snow in his flight, chased by two great black crows. The two beautiful creatures ranging through the woods in Liljfors’s painting (Buffalo) present another and more peaceful phase of the animal’s life. Paul Potter’s famous Bull at the Hague is unique among art animals, even in the land of cattle painters, for the marvelous skill in which the creature’s coat is reproduced and the character of his eye.
For pictures of cattle in the surroundings of the farm we have had two notable schools of art, the Dutch and the French. In the seventeenth-century Dutch group belong Cuyp, Adrian van der Velde, Berchem, Paul Potter, Du Jardin, and Wouverman. Examples of these masters are in all the galleries of the Netherlands, and the more important pictures have been reproduced by the large foreign photographers. The traditions of Dutch cattle painting have held their own in a remarkable way through the successive generations. The favorite animal is the cow, which a witty modern critic has described as the “omnipresent quadruped” of Dutch art, the “inexhaustible source of ideas re-created a hundred times, but always lending itself to fresh transformations.” A group of nineteenth-century men have proved themselves worthy followers of the great seventeenth-century school. Conspicuous among them are Mauve and Maris. The Metropolitan has excellent examples of Mauve as well as of the Belgian Verboeckhoven.
Pictures from modern French animal works are widely circulated. Nearly all of us are familiar with Rosa Bonheur’s Ploughing in Nivernais, where the huge oxen, three yokes for each of the two ploughs, plod patiently across the field drawing the primitive implement which upturns the soil for the planting. Pretty well known, too, are Troyon’s Oxen going to Work and the Return to the Farm, companion subjects in the Louvre. Émile Marcke was a pupil of Troyon, and his cattle pictures show much the same method of treatment. There are examples in various American collections which are familiar in reproductions. Dupré, who also belongs in this company, sometimes painted animal subjects; and still another member of the nineteenth-century French group was Charles Jacque, whose specialty was sheep. Pictures of sheep are very pleasing to children, and two favorites of the schoolroom and nursery are Millet’s Shepherdess and LeRolle’s Shepherdess. The pig, though a familiar figure in nursery tales, is not often encountered in the polite society of art, but George Morland’s Midday Meal, in the Metropolitan Museum, is a pig picture worthy of admiration.
As I have referred frequently to Landseer, something should be said of the work of this famous animal painter. In the mid-nineteenth century he was the popular idol in England, admired equally at the court and among the common people. Engravings from his pictures carried his name and his art all around the world. Then came a reaction when critics began to scoff at his literary and anecdotic qualities, and compared him unfavorably with the new favorite, Rosa Bonheur. At the present time we can judge both painters mere fairly and see their respective excellences, It is true that Landseer emphasized a dog’s kinship with man rather than bis characteristic animal traits. Instead of showing the bloodhound in search of his prey, his nose to the trail, he represented the noble creature waiting outside his wounded master’s door in an agony of suspense. Instead of showing the Scotch collie at his proper business of keeping the flock within bounds, he represents him grief-stricken beside the shepherd’s coffin. In such subjects as Dignity and Impudence, and Jack in Office, the dog assumes an almost human pose which appeals to the sense of humor as a sort of caricature. This method tends to sentimentalize and overhumanize the dog, instead of representing him in his true function in the animal kingdom. But even if we count out all the pictures in which the painter catered to the popular anecdotic taste, there still remain a sufficiently large number beyond such criticism, to give him high rank as an artist. His technical facility is above praise: he reproduced cleverly the texture of the hair and the brightness of the eye, and had a fine sense of pose. The deer was practically his original discovery. Studying this noble creature in the Scottish Highlands, he interpreted his life with great fidelity and sympathy.
Rosa Bonheur’s animal art covered a much larger range of subjects. She lived surrounded by a perfect menagerie of pets, ministering to them with touching devotion through their ailments and old age. Horses, dogs, cattle, deer, and lions were by turns her favorites, both as companions and art subjects. She knew the lion in every stage of his life from the soft cub, like the picture in Bowdoin College, to the old beast whose head was the model of “War.” Though none knew better than she the friendly human side of all animals, she exercised admirable self-restraint in subordinating this clement to the essential animal nature. Her strong, sure technique is of high rank. There is nothing weak or effeminate in her style, but marked virility. Comparing her work with Landseer’s, I should say in a general way that his animal figures are more often in repose, and hers in action. Perhaps she was a bit overpraised merely because she was a woman. It was something new in the nine-teenth century for a woman to attain artistic distinction, and still newer to enter a field regarded as distinctively masculine. Her work, too, had the obvious qualities which make for popular favor, rather than the subtleties which appeal to the connoisseur. The very bigness of the Horse Fair and the Ploughing in Nivernais calls forth encomiums from the unsophisticated admirer. Severer critics find her lacking in the subtleties of modeling which Barye’s work has taught us to look for, or in the dashing qualities of style and verve which Géricault exemplified.
Another woman devoting herself to animal art was Henrietta Ronner, born in Holland, and living after marriage in Belgium. For the last thirty years of her life she specialized in cats, and was liberally patronized by royalty and people of wealth. In the nineties she published two beautiful books with reproductions of her pictures. These illustrated volumes and some scattered magazine articles are the only means the general American public has had of knowing the wonderful work of this cat artist. It is to be hoped that time will open these treasures to us all. Some popular cat pictures in wide circulation among the dealers are by Adam and Lambert.
If we cannot get hold of reproductions of good animal art, we can at least find photographs direct from life, and these are far better than copies of poor paintings, especially crudely colored lithographs. A poor color print is likely to be flat and wooden in effect, while the camera reproduces the delicate gradations of black and white which show the modeling of the body. Good magazine illustrations supply us with much excellent material. The source of the picture is of little consequence, so long as we see to it that the animal represented is true to life.
Reference Books:—
- John Van Dyke. Studies in Pictures. Chapter on the “Animal in Art.”
- Sir Walter Gilbey. Animal Painters of England. London, 1900.
- Cosmo Monkhouse. Works of Sir Edwin Landseer, with a History of his Art Life.
- Estelle M. Hurll. Landseer. In the Riverside Art Series.
- René Peyrol. Rosa Bonheur: Her Life and Work. London, 1889.
- Marius Vachon. Henriette Ronner, the Painter of Cat Life and Cat Character. Translated by Clara Bell, 1895.
- Max Rooses. Dutch Painters of the Nineteenth Century. Chapter on Henrietta Ronner. London, 1898.
List of Animal Pictures
Child with animal pet.
| Hoecker. | Girl with Cat. (Dutch child with quaint cap.) | |
| Velasquez. | Prince Baltasar Carlos on Pony. Madrid Gallery, | |
Prince Baltasar Carlos (with hunting dogs). Madrid Gallery.
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| Reynolds. | Miss Bowles (and spaniel). Wallace Collection, London.
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| Reynolds. | Princess Sophia (and poodle). | |
| Lady Spencer and Sou (with dog, in the park). | ||
| Murillo. | St. John the Baptist playing with the Lamb. Examples in the galleries of Vienna, Madrid, and the National Gallery, London. | |
The Divine Shepherd. (Christ Child and lamb). Madrid Gallery.
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William Morris Hunt. The Belated Kid. (Young girl carrying home the tired "baby.") Boston Art Museum.
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Cattle Subjects.
| Cuyp.Landscape with cattle.Metropolitan Museum, New York. | |
| Paul Potter.The Young Bull.The Hague Gallery. |
| Mauve. |
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| Troyon. |
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| Schenck. Lost. (Sheep in storm.) Metropolitan Museum. | ||
| Van Marcke. |
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| Dupré. |
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| Jacque. |
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| William Morris Hunt.The Twin Lambs.Boston Art Museum. | |
| Winslow Homer.The Fox.Pennsylvania Academy. | |
| Liljfors.Foxes.Buffalo. | |
| Géricault.The Derby.Louvre. | |
| Dagnan-Houveret.At the Watering-Trough.(Cart-horse and driver.) | |
| Regnault.Horses of Achilles.Boston Art Museum. |
| Schreyer. |
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| Rubens. |
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| Landscer’s subjects. | |
The Newfoundland Dog.(“Distinguished Member of the Humane Society.”)
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| Shoeing. | |
| By Dog. | |
| King Charles Spaniels (lying on table).National Gallery. | |
| Sleeping Bloodhound. | |
| Monarch of the Glen.(Deer.) | |
| The Challenge.(Deer.) | |
| The Sanctuary.(Deer.) | |
Highland Shepherd’s Chief Mourner.(Shepherd dog beside master’s coffin.)
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| Suspense.(Bloodhound.)South Kensington Museum. | |
| Twa Dogs.South Kensington Museum. | |
High Life and Low Life.(Bulldog and greyhound, companion subjects in National Gallery of British Art, London.)
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| The Nutcrackers.(Squirrels.) | |
| Rosa Bonheur’s subjects. | |
| The Shepherd Dog.Wallace Collection, London. | |
| Flambeau.(Dog’s head.) | |
| Deer in the Forest.Metropolitan Museum. | |
| Lion Cub.Bowdoin College. | |
| Peace.(Head of horse.) | |
| War.(Head of old lion.) | |
| Ploughing in Nivernais.Luxembourg, Paris. | |
| Horse Fair.Metropolitan Museum. | |
| Haymaking in Auvergne.Luxemhourg. | |
| Brittany Sheep. | |
| Sheep of Berry. | |