Animalist Painting

The animalist painting is characterized by the representation of animal of company, servants or savages.

History of animalist painting

This kind of painting is particularly old since one finds it in the first paintings of Prehistory (rupestral Art and parietal Art) like the large mural frescos of the Grotte Chauvet, the Grotte Cosquer and especially, during the Magdalénien, in the caves of Lascaux and Altamira.

During the Antiquity, animalist painting will re-appear. Thus, in the ancient Egypt one finds many representation of figures of animals of which much had a religious significance (Lion, Hyène, Chacal, Chat, Chien, Chèvre, Loups, Bouquetin, Oryx as well as Oiseau X and Poisson S).

If the Phénicie NS left very few animalist paintings, on the other hand, the Etrusque S rather often represented animals, especially horses, on the Amphore S, the Cratère S or the funerary walls of rooms. The Greek also contributed to develop this kind of painting even if it is rather in the Sculpture that animalist art was expressed. The taste for the painted animals also appears in the mosaics and paintings of Pompéi.

At the beginning of the the Middle Ages, animalist painting often represented apocalyptic animals then, little by little, it was interested in the real and fantastic animals, often strange, having generally a significance symbolic system. Whereas the XIVe century saw almost disappearing this style from painting, with the XVe century, the Peinture of the Rebirth marked a revival of the style with a will to imitate nature.

Thereafter, the modern and contemporary artists continued to be interested in animalist painting, often while taking as a starting point the works of Old.

Animalist painters

It is of course necessary to distinguish the painters who represented animals in their works and those which were made a speciality of it, that one names for this reason " painters animaliers" , among which one can quote:

Other painters, without being itself specialized in animalist painting have in some their tables represented of the animals:

Internal bonds

External bonds

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