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Lot 153
Carl Clemens Moritz Rungius(American, 1869-1959)Bear in a stream taking notice 25 x 30in
2 – 3 August 2016, 18:00 PDT
Los AngelesUS$150,000 - US$200,000
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Carl Clemens Moritz Rungius (American, 1869-1959)
Bear in a stream taking notice
signed 'C. Rungius' (lower right)
oil on canvas
25 x 30in
overall: 35 x 40in
signed 'C. Rungius' (lower right)
oil on canvas
25 x 30in
overall: 35 x 40in
Footnotes
Provenance
Private collection, Southern California.
Born in Berlin, Germany in 1869, Carl Rungius took a serious interest in drawing, the outdoors, and animals at an early age and very little else. "I had the good fortune to have a single track mind, so I was a very poor scholar in general, being interested only in drawing, zoology, collecting butterflies and similar pursuits. Nature is still the best teacher and I paint it as I feel it." Majesty and Wilderness: Works by Carl Rungius (p. 5) He would go on to become one of North America's most celebrated and respected painters of wildlife.
Rungius trained at a number of schools in Berlin and served a brief stint in the Prussian Army, then came to America through an invitation from his uncle to go on a moose hunting trip in 1894. Rungius stayed in America, returning to Germany only briefly. By 1897 he was settled on Long Island, New York. He maintained a study there until 1910 but he was gone most summers hunting and drawing, primarily in New Brunswick and Wyoming. With America's interest in wildlife and the burgeoning conservationist movement Rungius found ready employment as an illustrator.
By 1910 Rungius was inspired to move his studio to New York City. He was elected to the National Academy of Design as an associate member in 1913 and gained full membership in 1920. Rungius also spent a great deal of time in Alberta, he built a studio there affectionately known as the "the Paintbox" in 1921. Rungius was a member of two conservationist groups The Campfire Club of America and the exclusive Boone and Crockett Club. There he made and maintained connections with wealthy like-minded men such as Theodore Roosevelt.
In Bear in a stream taking notice, Rungius crafts the bear and the landscape with equal importance and attention to detail. He was a meticulous artist with a rigid methodology who compiled nearly two thousand oil and pencil sketches over the course of his career. His tremendous understanding of anatomy allows him to depict this bear, boldly modeled with brown and yellow highlights, in the moment when it shifts its weight to its right front foot. The bear stares straight at the viewer, and the moment is one of acknowledgement and potential. The water under the bear is painted in a loose Impressionist style with broad strokes as the water courses over the bright colored rocks in the stream. The deeper water just behind the bear is depicted with smoother longer strokes and less broken color. Looming trees are depicted with a careful spectrum of greens to show the depth of the forest as well as the light breaking around the bend in the river above the bear.
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