Survival of the Fittest: Envisioning Wildlife and Wilderness with the Big Four

Survival of the Fittest: Envisioning Wildlife and Wilderness with the Big Four, Masterworks from the Rijksmuseum Twenthe and the National Museum of Wildlife Art is the first major piece of scholarship to come out of the multiyear Carl Rungius Catalogue Raisonné project. Presented with an accompanying catalogue, it will feature approximately 50 masterworks created by an influential group of painters known today as the Big Four: American Carl Rungius (born Germany, 1869–1959), Germans Richard Friese (1854–1918) and Wilhelm Kuhnert (1865–1926), and Swede Bruno Liljefors (1860–1939). “The work of these four artists established a vision of wildlife and wilderness that remains with us today and had a tremendous influence on wildlife artists of the 20th century,” Dr. Adam Duncan Harris says. This exhibit addresses current conversations about large-scale land conservation, hunting, endangered species, wildlife migration corridors, and rewilding efforts, particularly focused on the locations each artist chose to depict.