Kuhnert shaped the image of Africa as perceived in Europe and the US like no other painter. The Schirn art museum in Frankfurt has a retrospective.
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Wilhelm Kuhnert: The man who painted Africa's lions
Wilhelm Kuhnert specialized in animal paintings. His travels to East Africa in the late 19th and early 20th centuries inspired the Berlin artist's realistic paintings of animals in the wild.
Image: Jens Weyers
Winding Zebra
Wilhelm Kuhnert painted animals in the wild that look incredibly realistic, almost like photographs. On his many travels to Africa, Kuhnert always carried a camera, but he also took home copious amounts of sketches and drawings, references for the huge paintings he later created in Berlin.
Image: Jens Weyers
A suspicious noise
Unlike the static portraits of animals Kuhnert painted of animals in German zoos, his paintings of animals in the wild are astonishingly detailed and lifelike. His artwork was popular with big game hunters and with the bourgeoisie who like to adorn their salons with paintings of lions — a universal symbol of power.
Image: Jens Weyers
The artist at work
Wilhelm Kuhnert's travel equipment included paint, easels and pencils — and a rifle. In an emergency, the artist, who traveled with a group of servants and porters, would have to be able to defend himself against lions, hyenas and buffaloes. This photo of the artist at work was taken on an expedition in 1911.
Image: Nachlass Wilhelm Kuhnert
Recumbent Rhinoceros
His standard palette and oil colors being too heavy for travel, Kuhnert drafted his paintings with pencils and charcoal. This sketch of a rhinoceros is an example. Back home in Berlin, he then turned the sketches into large-format oil paintings. Kuhnert was fascinated by animals on the move in their natural habitat.
Image: Jens Weyers
Megalomania
Colonial rule in German East Africa (1885-1918) did not feature at all in Wilhelm Kuhnert's artwork, even if colonialism was part of the world the artist regularly moved in. Kuhnert hinted at it in a few caricatures and small watercolors, like the above undated work entitled "Megalomania."
Image: Jens Weyers
Warriors on the Path in Front of Mount Kibo
This 1917 oil painting shows the landscape around the Kibo, the highest peak and one of three extinct volcanoes on Africa's highest mountain range, Kilimanjaro (altitude 5895 meters, or 19,340 feet). It's one of the few instances where a work by Kuhnert actually features people, though mainly "for decorative purposes," according to the exhibition's curator, Ilka Voermann.
The "Schirn Kunsthalle" museum in Frankfurt has this fabulous retrospective of works by Wilhelm Kuhnert (1865 - 1926) through January 27, 2019. On display are about 120 paintings and sketches of an artist largely unknown today who returned from his travels in colonial Africa with a treasure trove of carefully crafted artwork.
Wilhelm Kuhnert (1865-1926), a German landscape and animal painter, was one of the first European artists to travel to eastern Africa in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In an era of few paintings and even fewer photographs from the European colonial areas in Africa, he would often study African wildlife more than a year at a time.
Kuhnert's illustrations for Brehms Tierleben (Brehm's Animal Life), a popular reference book on animals, secured his income and allowed him to travel to Africa to study and sketch animals in their natural habitat rather than in zoos. The zoo in Berlin had animals galore for the young artist to paint and draw, but he just wasn't interested in animals in captivity. He wanted to see them in their natural surroundings.
'An exercise in patience'
Europe then had a lively market for decorative paintings and sculptures of animals. Kuhnert, a business-minded artist, did a brisk trade in large-format oil paintings of zebras and elephants, selling them to wealthy collectors.
He also painted many of the animals printed on small trading cards that Stollwerck, the well-known chocolate factory in Cologne, added to its boxes of chocolates.
Observing lions, he once wrote in diary, was often an exercise in patience, "with the sun beating down on one's body, and the paint dripping from the palette like so much water."
"In one word," he concluded, "painting here is no breeze!"
"King of the Animals. Wilhelm Kuhnert and the image of Africa": from October 25 to January 27, 2019, the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt presents the first major retrospective on the artist's life and work. A catalogue is available in English.