Nov 1, 2005
Fierce Friends: Artists and Animals 1750-1900
The first picture you see in the exhibition Fierce Friends: Artists and Animals 1750-1900 is of a giraffe - sort of. Painted in about 1785, the creature in it has the neck of a giraffe, but its back is too long, its haunches too developed, and its legs are out of proportion to its body. Like most Europeans in the 18th century, the anonymous French artist who painted it had never seen a real giraffe. He relied on eyewitness descriptions, and on the skin of a giraffe the scientist and adventurer Franois Levallard had recently brought back from South Africa.
Exotic animals shipped back to Europe at this time usually died soon after arrival, even supposing they survived the voyage. Until about 1900, taxidermy consisted of stuffing the carcass with straw, so the results fell apart after a few years. This meant that ordinary men and women had very few opportunities to see exotic animals at first hand until the establishment of the first zoos - in Paris in 1793, in London in 1818. For an accurate depiction of a giraffe Europeans had to wait until 1827 and the arrival of the first living specimen, when the Swiss artist Jacques-Laurent Agasse painted his lovely study of the Nubian giraffe sent to King George IV by the Ottoman Viceroy of Egypt.
For most people in the 18th century, animals meant farm animals, carriage horses, and food for the table. But the Enlightenment was an age both of exploration and of discovery, as more and more species of animals, birds, fish, and insects were identified and brought back from the South Seas, Africa and India. In 1740 almost 600 species of animals were known to science. One hundred years later the number had risen to 2,400, including many that are familiar to most children today as a matter of course - ostrich, rhino, orang-utan and buffalo.
For reasons that I will never understand, the Van Gogh Museum saw this as a show for children and so pitched the labels and display to eight-year-olds.
In fact, parts of it will scare small children witless, and the content of the show couldn't be more sophisticated. But that is a minor irritant.
Otherwise Fierce Friends is worth a trip to Amsterdam to see.
Exotic animals shipped back to Europe at this time usually died soon after arrival, even supposing they survived the voyage. Until about 1900, taxidermy consisted of stuffing the carcass with straw, so the results fell apart after a few years. This meant that ordinary men and women had very few opportunities to see exotic animals at first hand until the establishment of the first zoos - in Paris in 1793, in London in 1818. For an accurate depiction of a giraffe Europeans had to wait until 1827 and the arrival of the first living specimen, when the Swiss artist Jacques-Laurent Agasse painted his lovely study of the Nubian giraffe sent to King George IV by the Ottoman Viceroy of Egypt.
For most people in the 18th century, animals meant farm animals, carriage horses, and food for the table. But the Enlightenment was an age both of exploration and of discovery, as more and more species of animals, birds, fish, and insects were identified and brought back from the South Seas, Africa and India. In 1740 almost 600 species of animals were known to science. One hundred years later the number had risen to 2,400, including many that are familiar to most children today as a matter of course - ostrich, rhino, orang-utan and buffalo.
For reasons that I will never understand, the Van Gogh Museum saw this as a show for children and so pitched the labels and display to eight-year-olds.
In fact, parts of it will scare small children witless, and the content of the show couldn't be more sophisticated. But that is a minor irritant.
Otherwise Fierce Friends is worth a trip to Amsterdam to see.