FOREWORD 



African life, it is clear that in that branch of art he would have distinguished 

 himself; but fortunately, he could not withstand his inclination. From a painter 

 of portraits of men and women he developed into a portrait-painter of animals, 

 finding his subjects alive by the countryside and in menageries and zoological 

 gardens, and then seeking them farther afield in Africa and Southern Asia, where 

 he worked assiduously in forest and jungle. Fifty of his characteristic studies are 

 included in this book, and in them, as in all, the blending of the animal with the 

 surroundings is remarkable, and the faithfulness with which the landscape, painted 

 on the spot, has been rendered is apparent at a glance. 



Search as we will we shall find nothing truer to nature than such triumphs 

 of art as the Polar Bear amid the Arctic ice, the hairy Tigers by the snowy 

 mountain lake, the slender Flamingoes in the evening landscape, the Silver Gull 

 sweeping above the ocean waves, the Black Swans as an idyll of the pool, the 

 Capercaillie posturing in the morning light, and many other masterpieces herein. 



This collection, like that of the Kuhnert Exhibition at the Fine Art Society's 

 Gallery in Bond Street, is arranged purely on artistic lines ; no attempt has been 

 made to classify the subjects in zoological order. It is an album of animal 

 portraiture as fully representative of the artist as possible. The pictures have been 

 photographically reproduced in colours from the oil paintings, and the imitation 

 is so exact that little of the charm of the originals has been lost. 



