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PrintUntamed Heart
Dwayne Harty, Fall Arts Festival poster artist, unveils trove of paintings in 'Yellowstone to Yukon: Journey of Wildlife and Art'
Carl Rungius
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Carl Rungius [1868-1959] painted the pronghorn of Grand Teton National Park—fleet-footed ancestors of the same animals that today haunt the sagebrush flats west of Kelly.
Rungius portrayed park antelope, however, without ever having to study them intensively on location in Jackson Hole. The 20th century wildlife artist, proclaimed to be one of the best in history at depicting North American big game on canvas, didn’t rely on photographs either.
So how did he paint them live with authenticity?
More than a century ago, at a pivotal stretch of his career, he directly observed Grand Teton antelope at the southern extent of their migratory winter range in Sublette County near Cora, more than a hundred miles from where the horned ungulates spend summers in the national park.
Rungius, as an artist, bore witness. Like flowing water, the movement of pronghorn herds across wild landscapes in Wyoming is an ancient tradition. One could also call it fragile. Scientists hail the so-called “path of the Grand Teton pronghorn” as one of the great phenomena of wildlife ecology that still endures on this continent—akin to the epic annual treks of wildebeest on Africa’s Serengeti Plain.
Today, human development is pressing in tightly on the corridor.
As a result, conservationists, local communities, landowners and government agencies are rallying to save this precious piece of Grand Teton’s heritage from being pinched shut forever. If the migration stops, many fear the animals will disappear, says Harvey Locke, a noted conservationist who now is also wearing the hat of art curator.
Rungius’ pronghorn paintings, Locke says, are coveted by collectors and poignant reminders of what once was, and what can still be, says Harvey Locke, a noted conservationist.
