Despite its popularity among people without a specialized knowledge of art, wildlife art continues to be scorned by the cultural cognoscenti.
Just ask Canadian wildlife artists Robert Bateman or George McLean.
You won’t find their work in the country’s most esteemed art galleries, with the exception perhaps of the McMichael Canadian Collection.
Occasionally, painters of animals, fish and birds gain acceptance — James Audubon and Winslow Homer come to mind. But it’s not because of their significance as artists, so much as their importance in terms of biology, anthropology or cultural history.
Animal art was not always dismissed, even if it never made it to the highest echelons of fine art hierarchy.
Between the 17th and 19th centuries, animal pictures — domestic, livestock and game birds, animals and fish — were highly regarded styles of genre art that depicted aspects of everyday, mostly rural life.
Pictures depicting hunting and fishing, dead game and the preparation of
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