Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Rungius Letter!

Serendipity: not only did I pick up several interesting books at Nick Potter's in Santa Fe; in my "new" copy of the uncommon 1948 Knopf Borzoi sporting book, Russell  Annabel's Hunting and Fishing in Alaska (which I have been looking for for years) I found a letter by the greatest painter of American (or any?) big game.

This guy.

One of his greatest:
The letter:


UPDATE: Walter Hingley fills in some history. "Note the Rungius letter is to Walter Joseph Wilwerding  (1891 - 1966) who illustrated for the big three. I believe he did a lot of the Annabel articles for Sports Afield which might mean the book was Wilwerding's or maybe even Annabel's...

He has had this book for forty years:


6 comments:

Malcolm Brooks said...

THAT is amazing! As was Rungius...

BorderWars said...

Buried treasure!

donkeygal said...

Rungius was spectacular. Known for his "moose butt" paintings. What a gem of a find!

Chad Love said...

Score!

That's the kind of stuff that keeps me haunting dusty old bookshops that make me sneeze and thriftshops that reek of despair. Mostly mine...

Randy Davis said...

Steve, I saw an exhibit once of Rungius and it was great work. Similarly, a few years ago I was driving in northern Minnesota through Aitkin, town on the edge of the southern rim of the iron range and found a museum in an old Carnegie Library devoted to F L Jacques and his wife, F L grew up there and it was stupendous, to grow hyperbolic, examples of F L way of drawing on site and coding the colors with a number system. "Paint by numbers" Lilia remarked and not derisively. Oddly Jacques industrial paintings of Duluth stole the show. Randy Davis

Anonymous said...

Although I MUST have seen Rungius illustrations hereabout(maybe I have some buried in an old wildlife/hunting book in my library?), I USED to have that "Cats In Action"--used it all the time when I used to draw and paint animals myself--I used to sell the paintings for a dollar apiece(and apparently people thought they were at least worth that--I sold a LOT! Everybody can afford a dollar!) when I was starving on the reservation(college), and after selling 3, I could go and get a good meal somewhere! Big cats sold better than ANYTHING, so I did a lot of big cats. And dammit, I lent that book to someone(an art teacher, actually) who never returned it. Dammit. But then, once I broke reservation(graduated) and had to start walking-the-white-man's-road(work a job for money), I had little time or need to paint to eat, so I likely wouldn't have used that book much in the ensuing years.....L.B.