Animals

The animal is art’s oldest subject. From the caves of the Ice Age to Liljefors’s foxes and Franz Marc’s blue horses, people have painted animals to understand nature, display power, tell stories and see themselves reflected.

• Caves, gods and royal lions
• Antiquity, bestiaries and Viking animal ornament
• Renaissance studies: Pisanello, Leonardo and Dürer
• Dutch bulls and Flemish hunts
• Stubbs, Landseer and Rosa Bonheur
• Chinese horses, oxen and birds
• Japan: wrestling frogs and Jakuchū’s roosters
• Bruno Liljefors and Nordic animal painting
• Modernism: blue horses, bulls and a shark in formaldehyde