Preserving, sharing and promoting the literature, art and culture of equestrian and field sports.

2012 Museum Exhibitions

The Wildlife Paintings of Bruno Liljefors (Swedish, 1860 – 1939), February 4 – March 15, 2012
This exhibition is a collection of paintings by the Swedish artist Bruno Liljefors that depict grand, sweeping, and innovative scenes of the dance of predator and prey. Liljefors had a vision that was ahead of his time, foreshadowing a movement that would reach its heyday a half a century later. Many would follow but Liljefors was altogether without peers. “I paint animal portraits,” he said, modestly. Read more.

Nic Fiddian-Green (British, b. 1963), Still Water, 2011
Hammered lead sculpture with copper rivets on an oak base, 9 feet, 10 feet 2 inches including base. Limited edition no. 1 of 5. This dramatic work is on exhibit in the Museum entrance through May. Read more.

Scraps: British Sporting Drawings from the Paul Mellon Collection at the VMFA, Richmond, April 6 – June 30, 2012
This exhibition takes its title from Henry Alken’s series of drawings and prints that depict varied and often-humorous episodes of sporting and country life. Unlike the more formal, traditional scenes represented in commissioned paintings, these works allowed artists to indulge a personal vision of animals, sport and country pursuits they encountered and observed directly. Read more.

Bob Kuhn: Drawing on Instinct, October 1, 2012 – February 28, 2013

Inaugural Exhibition

Afield in America: 400 Years of Animal and Sporting Art,  opened at the National Sporting Library and Museum in Middleburg, Virginia, on October 11, 2011 and is on exhibit through January 14, 2012. This inaugural exhibition in the new Museum is designed to raise awareness of the importance of animal and sporting art as a reflection of American history and cultural life. Over one hundred outstanding works of fine art representing every category of the genre have been selected to show how American animal and sporting artists developed a unique national style reflective of the diversity of our people, the rich variety of our wildlife, and the breadth of our national landscape. Paintings and sculpture have been drawn from the NSLM’s permanent holdings, as well as from private collections, museums, and other institutions throughout the United States.

Designed to attract the widest possible audience, Afield in America presents works by iconic American artists such as Albert Bierstadt, Thomas Eakins, Alfred Jacob Miller, and Frederic Remington, as well as those by recognized masters of the animal and sporting art genre, including John James Audubon, Paul Manship, Edward Troye, Arthur Fitzwilliam Tait, and William Tylee Ranney.

The works of other fine American sporting artists, which have long been esteemed by enthusiasts of the genre, but until recently were often overlooked by art historians, are an important focus of the exhibition. This group includes: William Herbert Dunton, Herbert Haseltine, Thomas Hewes Hinckley, Anna Hyatt Huntington, Alexander Pope, Ogden Pleissner, Percival Rosseau, and John Martin Tracy.

An illustrated, color catalogue accompanies the exhibition; critical essays explore larger interpretations of these works with the objective of defining the remarkable role animal and sporting artists have played in the history of American art. Essayists include: William H. Gerdts, Ph.D, art historian and author of Art Across America; Adam D. Harris, Ph.D, Curator of the National Museum of Wildlife Art and author of Wildlife in American Art; Daniel J. Herman, Ph.D, historian and author of Hunting and the American Imagination; F. Turner Reuter, Jr., Curator of Afield in America and author of Animal and Sporting Artists in America; and Robin R. Salmon, author and Vice President for Collections and Curator of Sculpture, Brookgreen Gardens.

Afield in America catalog
Order 540-687-6542, hreuter@nsl.org

Catalog cover: William Tylee Ranney, On the Wing., 1850. Private collection.

Book cover: Detail of Thomas Hewes Hinckley's Day's Bag: Gun Dogs and Game, 1846.
Animal and Sporting Artists in America book
Order 540-687-6542, hreuter@nsl.org