“How Did I Get Here?” album cover.
Courtesy | Louis Tomlinson Instagram
Before photography was widespread, illustrators filled magazine pages with their life-like drawings of animals and nature. Robert Frederick “Bob” Kuhn was one of the most influential wildlife illustrators of his time.
“Bob Kuhn: Drawing on Instinct” is on display in the Daughtrey Art Gallery through March 22. This exhibit showcases selections of Kuhn’s work, and, in conjunction with the Nimrod Education Center, seeks to educate viewers about nature and the conservation of natural resources.
By age 25, Kuhn had made a name for himself by creating cover art for Outdoor Life, a popular magazine in the mid-20th century. From the 1940s to the 1960s, Kuhn created illustrations for many magazine books such as “Bambi: A Life in the Woods.” In 1970, Kuhn transitioned to creating fine art, specifically acrylic paintings that still showed the movement and detail that his sketches expressed.
Visiting Assistant Professor of Art Roxanne Kaufman said despite the fame he earned from his sketches and illustrations, Kuhn’s personal favorites were the paintings created at the end of his career. The gallery gives a full perspective of his life’s work, showing pieces from the beginning of his career to his death in 2007.
“He has a large body of work that is on display at the National Wildlife Museum of Art, and that’s where a large portion of the show is borrowed from,” Kaufman said. “But the paintings in the exhibit are on loan from Kuhn’s daughters. All the acrylic paintings here are theirs, and they were Bob’s personal favorites that he had kept and that had never been sold.”
During his time as an active artist, Kuhn traveled to Africa and Alaska as well as across the continental United States, spending his time observing animals to create the most realistic depictions he could.
“You can tell he spent a lot of time observing animals and out in the wilderness because there’s a good variety of both power — like their livelihood of hunting — and humor, like the coyote scratching itself,” Kaufman said. “I think his work spoke to so many people because he showed all sides of the animals’ personalities.”
Sophomore Gabrielle Wood said seeing the drawings in the exhibit is different from anything else she has seen at the art gallery, and she admires Kuhn’s talent.
“His ability to capture movement is impressive, because he did a lot of his drawings from life,” Wood said. “He had to look at the animal and take it all down super fast, which I find to be really skillful and makes his pieces like little snapshots.”
Senior Cecila Jansen echoed Wood’s admiration for seeing a professional’s sketches and the beauty they hold.
“A lot of the shows we have seen in the gallery have finished and polished paintings,” Jansen said. “But I think it’s cool to see how the beginning stages of the sketches can even capture his mastery.”
