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Fierce Friends

Title: Stag Going to Water, 1859-61
Artist: Gustave Courbet (French,1819-1877)
Medium: Oil on Canvas
Dimensions: 86 3/5 x 108 3/10 in.
Permanent Collection: Musée des Beaux-Arts, Marseille
Image Courtesy: Carnegie Museum of Art

Artists and Animals
1750-1900
Carnegie Museum of Art
through August 27, 2006

The marriage between science and art is what makes Fierce Friends so unique. It brings together animal-themed works from some of the world's finest artists.

Andreas Blühm, formerly of the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam now Director of the Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne and Louise Lippincott, Curator of Fine Arts at the Carnegie Museum of Art jointly developed the exhibit. This is the second collaboration between these two museums.

Louise Lippincott said, "Fierce Friends takes an unflinching look at the realities of animals. It's not an entirely warm and fuzzy show. We're interested in the hard life of animals on farms, their treatment in scientific research, how they are fetishized as beautiful objects, and how we fantasize about them to suit our psychological needs." She adds, "the exhibition is about art and science. We feature not only wonderful works of art but wonderful works of science. We try to treat the scientific aspects in as much depth with as much seriousness as the works of art. We try to recreate for today's audiences the understandings of these subjects as it was experienced in the 18th and 19th Century. The real subject of this exhibit turned out to be not animals as subjects but the human animal relationship." This relationship was explored in different methods depending on the artist. Some of the best known 'animal' images are included in Fierce Friends such as Dignity and Impudence.

Edwin Landseer

His subjects usually told a sentimental story, such as Dignity and Impudence, which contributed to his success as an artist.

Landseer was commissioned to create four large bronze lions for the base of Nelson's Column found in Trafalger Square, London. He didn't have any prior experience as a sculptor but nevertheless undertook the position. Cast by the Italian sculptor Carlo Marochetti they were unveiled in 1867. Ill health prevented the artist from accepting the Presidency of the Royal Academy in 1865.

Edward Hicks

Title: The Peaceable Kingdom, ca. 1837
Artist: Edward Hicks (American 1780-1849)
Medium: Oil on Canvas
Dimensions: 29 x 35 7/10 in.
Permanent Collection: Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Bequest of Charles J. Rosenbloom
Image Courtesy: Carnegie Museum of Art

American primitive painter Edward Hicks created over 100 versions of The Peaceable Kingdom. A Quaker who spent some time preaching he often illustrated the Isaiah 11 prophecy that all men and animals will live in peace.

Eugen Ransonnet-Villez

Title: Underwater Landscape, 1864
Artist: Eugen Ransonnet-Villez (Austrian 1838-1926)
Medium: Oil on Canvas
Dimensions: 19 7/10 x 27 3/5 in.
Permanent Collection: Naturhistorisches Museum, Vienna
Image Courtesy: Carnegie Museum of Art

An Austrian diplomat Eugen Ransonnet-Villez painted the first work under water. He had to invent a mechanism to allow him to do this: a diving bell. He was able to work directly within the sea capturing the refracted underwater light and shadows as well as the species he saw.

Charles Wilson Peale

Title: The Exhumation of the Mastodon, 1806-08
Artist: Charles Wilson Peale (American 1741-1827)
Medium: Oil on Canvas
Dimensions: 50 x 62 1/2 in.
Permanent Collection: The Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore
Image Courtesy: Carnegie Museum of Art

American painter and naturalist Charles Wilson Peale built a gallery next to his studio where he displayed some of his portraits of Revoluationary war heroes such as George Washington. Peale's exhibition gallery expanded into a natural history museum and it was here that the first mastodon skeleton exhumed in the US was displayed. Later Peale painted an image in what is considered his most famous painting, The Exhumation of the Mastodon.

Vincent van Gogh

Title: Flying Fox (Kalong), 1886
Artist: Vincent van Gogh (Dutch 1853-1890)
Medium: Oil on Canvas
Dimensions: 16 1/10 x 31 1/10 in.
Permanent Collection: Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)
Image Courtesy: Carnegie Museum of Art

The exhibit was organized by the Van Gogh Museum of Amsterdam. It was specifically created to explore the time frame of when Darwin's Theory of Evolution had been published and its subsequent impact on artists. At the same time excavations of dinosaur skeletons such as the Mastodon influenced other artists.

Title: Crab on its Back, 1889
Artist: Vincent Van Gogh (Dutch, 1853-1890)
Medium: Oil on Canvas
Dimensions: 15 x 18 3/8 in.
Permanent Collection: Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)
Image Courtesy: Carnegie Museum of Art

Van Gogh's paintings in this exhibit were painted when he was in the St-Rémy aslyum recovering after his breakdown. He looked for subjects that would help him return to his painting. Louise Lippincott said about one of Van Gogh's works in Fierce Friends of a moth. "There is a wonderful poignant letter to his brother Theo about painting the Great Peacock Moth. He said it was a beautiful creature than he wanted to paint though in order to paint it he had to kill it. He is very explicit about this in the letter about how to capture this animal in life he had to kill it. Even an artist that is celebrating beauty in nature had to do some destruction in order to achieve this end."

Antoine Louis Barye

Title: Tiger Attacking an Antelope, modeled, c. 1835-1840, cast after 1857
Artist: Antoine Louis Barye (French, 1796-1875)
Medium: Bronze
Dimensions: 13 3/4 x 21 x 9 1/4 in.
Permanent Collection: Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Purchase
Image Courtesy: Carnegie Museum of Art

Barye was considered to be the most famous animal sculptor in the 19th Century. He is largely responsible for the popularity of the small animal bronze in a field that was called animaliers.

Title: Pair of dishes, 1793
Artist: Sèvres Porcelain Factory (French, established in 1756)
Medium: Hard-paste porcelain
Dimensions: 1 3/4 x 13 7/8 x 9 5/16 in
Permanent Collection: Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Jennie B. and Lois E. Scaife Fund
Image Courtesy: Carnegie Museum of Art

Fierce Friends illustrates how arts took inspiration from science, natural history, and literature about animals, and how those fields were inspired or influenced by art. It is done with famous animal-based paintings and sculptures alongside fossils, specimens of taxidermy, ground plans of zoological gardens, illustrated books, bird cages and steam engines.

Title: Figure, Horse and Rider Being Attacked by Lion, c. 1876
Artist: Attributed to Emmanuel Frémiet (French, 1824-1910)
Medium: Terracotta
Dimensions: 7 1/2 x 9 in.
Permanent Collection: Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Anna R.D. and Mabel Lindsay Gillespie Fund
Image Courtesy: Carnegie Museum of Art

Fierce Friends: Artists and Animals 1750-1900
Carnegie Museum of Art:
through August 27, 2006