Wilhelm Kuhnert (Germany 1865‑1926)

”Tiger im Dschungel”

To be sold at Uppsala Auktionskammare’s Important Sale Week 10 – 13 June 2025

Lot 714 Wilhelm Kuhnert (Germany 1865‑1926). ”Tiger im Dschungel”. Signed and dated Wilh. Kuhnert 1917 lower right. Oil on canvas, 89.5 x 140 cm.

With notes on the stretcher by the artist: ”Wilh. Kuhnert ’Tiger im Dschungel’ #1”.
With notes on the stretcher: ”Herrn Kuhnert Reishstr. 105 I-III”.
Uppsala Auktionskammare would like to thank Dr. Angelika Grettmann-Werner for her valuable information when cataloguing this lot. The authenticity of this work has been confirmed on the basis of a digital image and it is included in the Kuhnert catalogue raisonné under WV no. 6194. Dr. Grettmann-Werner’s written expertise is included with this lot.

Estimate

800.000 – 1.000.000 SEK
€ 73.000 – 91.000

Provenance

Malmö Auktionskammare, acquired by a previous owner in 1962.
Uppsala Auktionskammare, 12 June 2012, lot 1186.
A Swedish private collection, acquired at the above sale.

Wilhelm Kuhnert, a master of animal and wildlife painting, was born in 1865 in today’s Poland and died 1926 in Switzerland. He was a noted artist, author, and illustrator who specialized in animal images and is considered one of the most important German animal painters of his era. 

Kuhnert was educated at the Königliche Akademische Hochschule für Bildende Künste (Royal Academic College of Fine Arts) from 1883 to 1887. He was trained in painting hair, fur and muscles by the animal painter Paul Meyerheim in Berlin, who noticed his exceptional talent and encouraged him to devote himself wholeheartedly to animal painting. While based in Berlin, Kuhnert travelled to Egypt, East Africa, India and Scandinavia to conduct extensive landscape and animal studies. Many wild animal illustrators during this period sketched their images in the zoological parks of Europe. Kuhnert, on the other hand, distinguished himself by sketching his subjects directly in the wild. Because of this, Kuhnert played an important role in the free development of realistic painting. 

Kuhnert travelled extensively through areas of Africa and Asia, in regions rarely visited by Europeans at the time. As both an artist and a hunter, he made tireless efforts to track down and observe his animal subjects, capturing them in his sketchbooks with remarkable immediacy. He was particularly fascinated by the great predators of the animal kingdom. Kuhnert was a pioneer of plein air painting, often sketching the wildlife in its variety and sometimes difficult conditions, in their natural habitat. He was a supreme draughtsman who managed to rapidly capture the likeness of the wild animals before the motif changed. With an eye for detail and a swift and skillful hand, he painted his extraordinary subjects. From these on-site sketches and drawings, he then painted, aided by his visual memory, detailed oil paintings and watercolour paintings, in his atelier in Germany.

This striking painting, “Tiger im Dschungel”, exemplifies Kuhnert’s unique approach to animal portraiture. The painting captures the beauty of the tiger in its territory. The vibrant, rich colours and exquisite details of the tiger’s fur, coupled with the lush green backdrop of the jungle, transport the viewer directly into the heart of the wild. The artist manages to evoke both a physical and emotional presence of this majestic creature. The powerful yet calm tiger leaves a lingering sense of suspense and anticipation. In “Tiger im Dschungel”, Kuhnert asserts his legacy as one of the foremost wildlife painters of his time, where the essence of the wild is brought close to us. As a powerful symbol of the untamed world, the beautiful tiger also reminds us of the fragile world we live in, today much more explored and exploited, than when Kuhnert in 1917 depicted his tiger in the Far-Eastern wilderness.   ■

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