“Survival of the Fittest: Picturing Wildlife and Wilderness”

Carl Rungius (German, 1869–1959). Morning Mist (Harlow Triptych), ca. 1930. Oil on canvas, 47 x 70 1/2 inches. JKM Collection®, National Museum of Wildlife Art, Jackson, Wyoming, © Estate of Carl Rungius.

In Survival of the Fittest: Picturing Wildlife and Wilderness, Masterworks from the Rijksmuseum Twenthe and the National Museum of Wildlife Art, the museum will showcase the works of four artists who revolutionized wildlife painting in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

While many works in the museum’s collections feature animals, this is the first time the museum has showcased wildlife painting as a genre in itself.

Germans Richard Friese, Wilhelm Kuhnert, and Carl Rungius and Swedish painter Bruno Liljefors—known today as the Big Four—helped usher in a new way of representing animals. Inspired by the scientific revolution of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species—which visitors to the exhibition will see in its first English and German editions, thanks to loans from the Linda Hall Library—these artists went beyond traditional representations of animals. Instead of sketching at zoos or using other art as models, they looked to the natural world, traveling in Europe, Africa and North America to represent wildlife in its natural environment.

Marked by painterly bravura, these paintings are full of convincing naturalism. From foxes and falcons to lions and elephants, from islands off the coast of Sweden to the Rocky Mountains, the Big Four traveled the globe in their quest to understand and accurately depict the creatures of our world.

The exhibition is organized by the National Museum of Wildlife Art in Jackson, Wyoming, and features loans from the Rijksmuseum Twenthe in the Netherlands. Combined, these institutions have the largest repositories of these artists’ works.

A fully illustrated catalogue explores issues of representation of animals in art, conservation, and the tricky balance between 19th-century wildlife art painted on-site and colonialism. Meanwhile, a range of creative activities and interpretation, created especially by the museum, will help connect the works to the rest of the collections on-site, as well as help teach guests about conservation.

The exhibition is on view from March 22 to August 24, 2025. As always, admission to special exhibitions is free for museum members, and the permanent collection galleries are free to all.

– William Keyse Rudolph, Deputy Director, Curatorial Affairs, Chief Curator and Head, Architecture, Design and Decorative Arts, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art