Bransom and Different Visions of Wildlife

In his guide to animal art, Bransom speaks of the different contemporary wildlife artists:

Carl Rungius, a trained young German artist who came to the United States in 1894, quickly established himself as an illustrator of animal books. He developed into a masterful painter of American big game animals, and his landscape background were especially good. Charles Livingston Bull, Philip R. Goodwin, Gleeson, Bruce Horsfall, and Lynn Bogue Hunt were also outstanding artists of this period when animal and bird stories were so popular.

It is instructive to examine the work of these artists and compare them to Bransom's work. While all of them can be seen to be responsive to the keen interest in wildlife and nature at the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, their work can be seen to be fashioned from different perspectives. Conservationists responded to the dramatic decimation of wildlife populations, and their efforts were directed at conserving wildlife as a natural resource for future generations. Preservationists sought to protect wildlife for its own sake independent of its utility and economic benefit to humanity. Humanitarian movements sought to protect animals from abuse. Darwin's thought fundamentally altered the understanding of the relationship of humanity to the rest of the animal world. Darwin understood animals as "...fellow brethren in pain, disease, death, suffering and famine," and Darwin's concepts of "natural selection" and "survival of the fittest" were influential at the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Wildlife artists were influenced by these different perspectives. By comparing Bransom's work to that of his contemporaries we can gain an understanding of the competing visions and an appreciation for Bransom's particular point of view.

Carl Rungius (1869-1959):

Born in Germany, Rungius was trained at the Berlin Art Academy. In 1894, he came to the United States at the invitation of his uncle to hunt moose in Maine. In 1895, he would visit Wyoming where he was captivated by the wide-open spaces and the variety of wildlife. He spent most of his career in the western United States and Canadian Rockies.

A painting entitled "The Days of Bison Millions" is characteristic of Rungius's work. This painting shows the grand landscape that Bransom notes is typical of Rungius. This vast panorama looking west to the Wyoming Range focuses on a single bison in the foreground with a great herd beyond. The landscape shows no evidence of human activity. It is a world before human settlement. Even Native Americans are not included. The painting was intended as a reminder of the loss of herds of buffalo due to their large-scale slaughter. His paintings of bear, caribou, elk, puma, bighorn sheep, moose, and others are statements of the diversity wildlife that deserve to be conserved. Absent from his paintings is "survival of the fittest." Like the bison, the animals are presented in quiet majesty. Violent competition between different species has no place in Rungius's paintings. Rungius's vision was Eden-like, an uncontaminated Peaceable Kingdom. Rungius's paintings reflect ideas of the preservationist movement of the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that wanted to set aside millions of acres in national parks and forest preserves for future generations free of modern development.

Philip R. Goodwin (1881-1935)

Born in Norwich, Connecticut, Goodwin attended the Rhode Island School of Design and the Artist Student League in New York before becoming a part of the Brandywine School under the mentorship of Howard Pyle. Like other members of the school, Goodwin became a painter and illustrator of dramatic action. Pyle's swashbuckling pirates, Arthurian heroes, and adventures of Robin Hood have been replaced in Goodwin's paintings and illustrations by images of the American West. At the center of Goodwin's paintings is the man of action taking on the challenges of the wildlife and the natural elements.

After World War I when Winchester Firearms wanted to expand into a peace time market, they commissioned Goodwin to paint what would be the iconic image for the brand: American outdoorsman and hunter galloping across the plains with his Winchester rifle in hand. Just as the rider tamed the wild horse, the outdoorsman will use his rifle to tame the west. While Pyle's Arthur had his Excalibur, or his Robin Hood had his bow and arrow, or his pirate had his saber and pistol, the outdoorsman had his trusty rifle.

Theodore Roosevelt, the quintessential outdoorsmen and man of action of the period, was attracted to Goodwin's paintings, and he commissioned him to provide illustrations for African Game Trails. Roosevelt was an advocate of the "strenuous life" with its cultivation of "vigorous manliness." He saw this as a counter-balance to what he perceived as the softness and over-civilization of the increasingly urban modern world. Hunting was a way of restoring in the modern world "the hardihood, self-reliance, and resolution" of the pioneers. The paintings of Philip Goodwin give visual expression to Roosevelt's ideology.

Lynn Bogue Hunt (1878-1960)

Born near Rochester, New York, Hunt grew up in Albion, Michigan. He moved to New York City in 1903 where he began his career as a freelance artist providing illustrations for covers of magazines, books, and advertisements. He would contribute 106 covers for Field & Stream whose editor said of Hunt; "[T]here are a very few artists, indeed, who can paint wildlife as the sportsman sees it in the field. Hunt can do this." Significantly Hunt's paintings are from his perspective as an avid recreational hunter and fisherman. His illustrations reflect these interests with images of waterfowl hunting, upland game bird hunting, and saltwater fishing.

Appealing to an audience of sportsman hunters and anglers, Field & Stream railed against the plundering of wildlife by market hunters. At the core of the conservation movement was the mission to conserve wildlife as a resource for future generations of sportsmen. Hunt's paintings give a vision of the bounty resulting from conservation efforts.

There is little sense of empathy for the birds themselves. They are objects to be enumerated like flowers in a still life painting. A Bransom cover for American Legion Magazine presents a dramatically different perspective. Here we are asked to have empathy for the mallard fleeing the ravenous hawk, in this struggle for survival. The hunter in Bransom's image has become a passive observer of this Darwinian struggle. Bransom will regularly construct his paintings from the point of the view of the wildlife.

Robert Bruce Horsfall (1869-1948)

Born in Iowa and studied at the Cincinnati Art Academy, Robert Horsfall was most known for his illustrations of birds. He for example provided 57 color plates in Alice Ball's A Year with the Birds (New York, 1918). In the tradition of Audobon, Horsfall's illustrations can be seen as scientific since their primary emphasis is being an aid to identification and information about the habitat. The illustration of the Belted Kingfisher distinguishes between the male and female and provides information about their nesting in burrows along earthen banks and their diet. The choice of profile view of the birds is for clarity in identification. The profile view freezes the birds not allowing for the representation of motion and expression.

Charles Livingston Bull (1874-1932)

Of all his contemporaries, Bransom had the most admiration for Charles Livingston Bull. Their careers and approaches to wildlife painting mirror each other. Bull collaborated with Goodwin on the illustration of the first edition of Jack London's Call of the Wild. Like Bransom, Bull's illustrations regularly appeared on the covers of The Saturday Evening Post. Bull also illustrated some of the stories of Charles G. D. Roberts. Bull was also a regular at the Bronx Zoo. A major regret for Paul Bransom was that he never met Bull even though they both spent their summers in the Adirondacks. A long desired meeting was prevented by Bull's untimely death.

Comparing their works, Bransom and Bull are clearly kindred spirits. Unlike artists like Goodwin and Hunt who view animals from the perspective of the hunter, Bransom and Bull put animals at the center of their works. Humans are rarely seen in their works, and when they are seen, they are seen from the perspective of the animal. Both artists had a deep sense of empathy and respect for animals. Both had an antipathy for hunting. What the naturalist Beecher S. Bowdish says of Bull could be easily applied to Bransom as well: "Charles much preferred watching the wild creatures alive than dead, so he didn't often use a gun. He was always looking for the beauty of the beautiful and I have heard many say that it was this trait that made him so delightful a companion in the field. He was gentleness and kindness itself and the most unselfish of men." It is appropriate that the National Wildlife Museum offers the annual Bull-Bransom Award to recognize excellence in children's illustration.

Putting their works side by side with Bull on the left and Bransom on the right demonstrates the striking similarities and affinity of the two artists and their work:

The Bull image in the last comparison is from the endpapers of Charles G. D. Roberts Kings in Exile from 1910 in which Bransom, Bull, and Goodwin contributed illustrations. The comparison to Bransom's picture of wolves in the Caroga Museum shows how both know wolves enough to capture their wariness and alertness in a variety of distinctly wolf-like poses. Despite the variety of poses, both artists capture the solidarity of the pack. Both artists capture the intense stare down between the wolves and the viewer. The mood of both images is like boxers staring each other down before the bout. There is a sense of mutual respect in this competition between two predators.

The conception of wolves in the work of Bull and Bransom is in contrast to the attitude of conservationists like William Hornaday who in his 1904 book The American Natural History. wrote:"Of all the wild creatures of North America, none are more despicable than wolves. There is no depth of meanness, treachery or cruelty to which they do not cheerfully descend." Hornaday would advocate for the extermination of wolves. Theodore Roosevelt, also an ardent conservationist, denounced the wolf as being "the archetype of ravin, the beast of waste and desolation." This malevolent conception of wolves is given visual form in paintings of wolves by Goodwin and Hunt:

The focus on the actions of men in these paintings is in contrast to the focus on animals in the Bransom and Bull works. Goodwin and Hunt accentuate the ravenous nature of the wolves. Like in his other "predicament paintings," Goodwin shows the hunter calmly meeting the challenge as he takes aim with what is undoubtedly his Winchester rifle at the wild pack of charging wolves. This dichotomy of man versus beast echoes ideas in western culture going back to ancient Greece of the rational man overcoming a chaotic other. Instead of the white hunter in the Goodwin painting, Hunt represents the wolves mauling two Indigenous Americans writhing in pain and who attempt to fight back with knives. Hunt appears to be engaging in racial stereotyping. Counter to the popular imagination of the "big bad wolf," contemporary studies have shown instances of wolves attacking humans are uncommon, usually only in cases of rabid wolves or when wolves are facing severe starvation.

Bransom's Attitude towards Wildlife:

Paul Bransom had a deep love and respect for wildlife. He saw animals not just as a resource to be conserved for future generations, but he had a deep sense of empathy for animals as fellow sentient beings that deserve to be preserved in their own right and their place in the natural order. Bransom was responsive to humanitarian concerns about the cruelty to animals. He did pictorial essays documenting the abuse of horses in the American city and the slaughter of exotic birds and furry animals for their use in women's fashion.

Paul Bransom was not a sportsman hunter; he took no pleasure in hunting. He provided illustrations for a 1914 essay entitled Killing for Fun" by George Bernard Shaw, an avid animal rights advocate. The essay attacks the human cruelty to animals. One pathetic image shows a stag wounded by the king that managed to escape and was left to die in the woods. In the 1920s Bransom was commissioned to illustrate articles in Country Gentleman, one a coon hunt in Alabama and the other mountain lion hunt in New Mexico. While finding pleasure in being out in nature and marveling at the skill of the hunting dogs, he had antipathy for the goal of the hunt, the eradication of predators like mountain lions and wolves threatening livestock and the deer population. In his memoir All Unplanned (p. 160), Bransom expresses relief that they did not get a mountain lion and says, "I hate to see these beautiful animals killed. They fulfill a real purpose in the order of nature." On the trip they encountered the remains of a deer mauled by a mountain lion. He accepted this death as a part of the natural order of things: "This is all a part of life, or of nature. Of course, we know one function of the lions is to keep the deer alert and swift and in good condition. The deer the lions kill are mostly the old ones whose tenure of life is about over anyway." After returning from the hunt, Bransom heard of the results of a Brooklyn doctor's trip to the same region. They got four mountain lions, and the doctor brought two young ones back to the Brooklyn zoo. Bransom expressed sadness for the lives of these lions spent in captivity: "I don't like to reflect on how their lives were affected. To be transplanted from the freedom of that wild and beautiful country to a city zoo where they had 'security' and could be certain of food --but at what a price!"

Bransom did a number of magazine covers featuring hunters like the October 1, 1929 issue of Country Gentleman. In none of them does he show the hunter actually shooting or returning home with his quarry.

The sportsman hunter with his dog is shown peacefully walking across a field. This bucolic image is in dramatic contrast to the hunting scenes by artists like Goodwin and Hunt.

When humans appear in Bransom's works they are frequently cast as being malevolent as in the scene from Call of the Wild in which one of Buck's abductors is brutally beating him. In a story Stephen Chalmers published in St. Nicholas Magazine, the ominous shadows of the captors are cast over the floor of the cage. Cowering in the corner, the bear captured as a cub can only dream of a life of freedom walking through the woods.

While Bransom will illustrate stories that revolve around human cruelty to animals, very rarely are there examples of animals threatening humans, and when they do, the animal is usually responding to a threat posed by a human. An example is an illustration of a Peregrine falcon harassing a hunter from a 1929 story by Paul Annixter entitled "The Throne Among the Winds." This attack was as the story recounts "...a thing which is given to but one male falcon in a hundred ...to do." It was justified because the hunter had just killed the falcon's mate and was threatening his eyrie with his two chicks. The hunter realizes, "He had killed the mother bird. If he shot the male it meant the murder of the fledglings as well. Before heaven and nature he was not a butcher. Suddenly in the rare silence with the sun and sky watching, he knew he could not go through with this petty plan of vengeance. All his instincts of fair play rose up and he he saw that in the eyes of nature the old falcon had the same right as he to live and perpetuate his kind." These are sentiments Paul Bransom would have certainly agreed with.

A crucial point in Buck's transformation from domestic house dog to a wild predator was Buck's culling of an old bull moose from his herd:

As twilight fell the old bull stood with lowered head, watching his mates --the cows he had known, the calves he had fathered, the bulls he had mastered-- as they shambled on at a rapid pace through the fading light. He could not follow, for before his nose leaped the merciless fanged terror that would not let him go..... The great head drooped more and more under its tree of horns, and the shambling trot grew weaker and weaker. He took to standing for long periods, with nose to the ground and dejected ears dropped limply....

The moose with heavy head stands before Buck in resignation. The next image shows Buck with the glowing eyes of the wild beast feasting on the carcass of the moose.

At last, at the end of the fourth day, he pulled the great moose down. For a day and a night he remained by the kill, eating and sleeping....

This episode anticipates current ideas about the important role predators play by culling herds in helping to maintain sustainable populations.

Many of Bransom's images of predation have what can be characterized as a "terrible beauty." An example of this is a picture of an arctic owl in pursuit of two ptarmigans. The terror in the expression of the latter is countered by the fierce expression of the owl which reaches out with sharp talons to clutch the ptarmigans in their flight for survival. In this almost monochromatic picture, the owl's eye, mouth, and especially sharp talons are accentuated in black. This is nature "red in tooth and claw."

Looking at the image abstractly, the wings, body, and head of the owl are formed of a series of spheres outlined with beautiful fluid curved lines.The large sun in the background echoes the curvilinear form of the owl. Bransom used a sun frequently in his images providing a symmetry and stability to the pictures. The picture is rendered with very subtle gradations of light and shadow. The barring on the owl adds a delicate rhythm and echoes the curvilinearity of the outlining of the owl. The head of the owl is given more attention by the slight intensification of the pink sun around its head.

Bransom will regularly reuse compositions. Bransom had used a similar composition in a 1925 Saturday Evening Post cover. While clearly similar, what appear as minor changes between the pictures are significant. The leg of the Arctic owl appears slightly enlarged and reaches forward more aggressively. Its black talons appear sharper and stand out more prominently against the white background. The owl's straight leg contrasts with curves of the rest of the body. The stare of the Arctic owl is more assertively focused on the ptarmigans.

Bransom's attention to the artistic quality of the image does not compromise its ornithological accuracy. The barring on the back of the wings is characteristic of mature female Arctic owls. Bransom has shown the ptarmigans with their white winter plumage and black tail feathers usually only visible when the bird is in flight.

Final Thoughts:

Paul Bransom's works help us to appreciate and respect wildlife. They also remind us of who we are and our relationship to the world around us.

Throughout much of western history, there has been a practice of defining ourselves against what we are not. Constructing an "other" has been a powerful method of asserting dominance. To be human has been defined in opposition to being a wild animal. Human reason has been a means of bringing the wild under control. This taming of the wild justifies human dominance. For example, the domestication of the horse has been a powerful symbol in western culture of this dominance. Think of all the equestrian portraits and statues in western art and how they were used to assert dominance. For example, Napoleon's calm demeanor is in marked contrast to the wild expression of his rearing horse which like the wild Alpine landscape Napoleon conquers in David's painting of Napoleon Crossing the St. Bernard Pass.

This ideology underlies the work of wildlife artists like Philip Goodwin. As we have seen, at the center of his paintings is the active man taking on and conquering the wild. The active "man" defines himself by his ability to subdue the wild. Goodwin's illustration of Roosevelt's son Kermit shooting the charging leopard is a good example. With his rifle, a symbol of western technology, Kermit calmly shoots the cat at almost point blank range. We should also be aware of the colonialist implications of the image. The African man in the background brandishing only a stick is seen as being subordinate.

In Paul Bransom's works we regularly take the perspective of the animal. Rather than seeing the animal in opposition, we are asked to identify with the animal. Yes there is difference between different animals, but there is an underlying commonality. In the story of the peregrine falcon, the hunter in his decision not to shoot the falcon realizes his fundamental likeness to the falcon. Both have the right to live and to hunt. This fundamental acceptance of likeness and not difference is a central message of Paul Bransom's art.