Friedrich Wilhelm Kuhnert, born in 1865, occupies a singular position in the history of wildlife painting, bridging the late 19th century’s academic traditions with a newfound fidelity to the untamed. His earliest education was under the tutelage of Paul Friedrich Meyerheim in Berlin, where a rigorous study of zoological detail and animal anatomy laid the foundations for Kuhnert’s lifelong dedication to depicting the animal kingdom with uncommon precision. Meyerheim, an accomplished painter of animals himself, imbued his young apprentice with the importance of direct observation - a principle Kuhnert would take to extraordinary lengths.
Between 1883 and 1887, Kuhnert’s tenure at the Berlin University of the Arts further refined his technical skill, particularly his facility with the textures of fur and the muscular structures of his subjects. The academic training he received there, marked by the classicist rigour of the time, might have confined him to the conventions of studio painting, yet Kuhnert’s restless curiosity soon led him far beyond the studio walls.
Kuhnert’s artistic trajectory was decisively shaped by his extensive travels, notably his four expeditions into the heart of Central Africa. At a time when much of this region remained largely uncharted by European eyes, Kuhnert’s dedication to painting wildlife in its natural habitat was pioneering. Unlike many of his contemporaries, who relied on zoos or trophy specimens, Kuhnert immersed himself in the landscapes and atmospheres that his subjects inhabited. The en plein air method, borrowed from the Impressionists, lent his paintings a vitality that distinguished them from the more static, often taxonomic studies that typified academic wildlife art.
The contemporary writer and naturalist J. G. Millais recognised Kuhnert’s achievements, praising the authenticity of his lions, elephants, zebras and antelopes. Millais’s observation that Kuhnert seemed to have “got inside the very skin of African life” captures the essence of the artist’s work. His canvases did more than record the appearance of animals; they evoked the heat, the dust, and the elusive presence of the wild, a presence that resonated deeply with the European imagination at the dawn of the twentieth century.
Kuhnert’s contributions extended beyond the easel. His illustrations for publications such as Brehms Tierleben (Brehm’s Life of Animals) demonstrated a rare harmony between artistic vision and scientific accuracy. This duality of roles - artist and naturalist - placed Kuhnert among the ‘Big Four’ of wildlife painting, alongside Carl Rungius, Bruno Liljefors and Richard Friese. Each brought their own sensibilities, but Kuhnert’s African journeys lent his work an immediacy that was perhaps unique among them.
Today, his paintings are held in collections that recognise both his artistic merit and his contribution to natural history. Institutions such as The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Museum of Wildlife Art in Jackson Hole, the Natural History Museum in London, and Berlin’s Alte Nationalgalerie bear witness to the enduring relevance of his vision. The 2015 Berlin exhibition “Kuhnert Among Lions” and the 2019 retrospective at the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt marked significant reassessments of his legacy, cementing his position as both an artist and a documentarian of the wild.
Kuhnert’s life, a blend of scientific enquiry and artistic passion, offers a portrait of an artist who refused to accept the boundaries of his age. His work invites us still to peer into the landscapes of the past and to sense, however fleetingly, the uncharted territories that once lay beyond the edge of Europe’s maps.
