Beschreibung:

Carl Ethan Akeley (1864-1926)The Wounded Comrade inscribed 'The Wounded Comrade / © Carl E. Akeley / .1913.' and 'Cast for / A. Barton Hepburn Esq' (along the base), stamped 'ROMAN BRONZE WORKS N.Y.' (at the back of the base) bronze with brown patina 12 in. highFootnotesProvenance The artist. Mr. A. Barton Hepburn, Esquire, New York, New York, from the above, 1913. The Distinguished Collection of Dr. Paul Cushman, Jr., by descent. Literature Patricia J. Broder, Bronzes of the American West, New York, 1973, pp. 247 and 249, another example referenced. Victoria S. Schmitt, Four Centuries of Sporting Art, Mumford, New York, 1984, p. 142, another example illustrated. The Wounded Comrade is an important work in bronze by pioneering taxidermist, naturalist, inventor and animal sculptor Carl Ethan Akeley and displays the artist's deep understanding of animals' anatomy and movement. In his taxidermy practice, Akeley specialized in mounting African wildlife, particularly gorillas and elephants. He is also credited with major innovations in taxidermy technique. He created lightweight but study hollow mannequins sculpted with realistic musculature in active poses on which to mount the skins. He displayed animals in natural groupings and in settings full of accurate flora and landscape details. The result created animal displays that seemed to viewers to be alive. Sculpting in bronze was a natural extension of Akeley's sculptural taxidermy mannequins, and elephants were his most frequent subject. From a young age, Akeley was interested in animals. He taught himself taxidermy as a child and mounted his first animal, a neighbor's canary, at the age of 12. In 1883 Akeley went to work as an apprentice at Ward's Natural Science Establishment in Rochester, New York, where he began to explore naturalistic mountings and settings in taxidermy. While at Ward's, Akeley had his first major commission to mount P.T. Barnum's Jumbo the elephant after it perished in a train accident. In 1886, Akeley moved to Milwaukee and worked at the Milwaukee Art Museum where he created the world's first museum habitat diorama in 1890. In 1895 Akeley took a job at Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History, lured with the promise of travel to Africa. While there he led two collecting expeditions to the continent: in 1896 to Somaliland in conjunction with the museum's curator D.G. Elliot, and in 1905 to British East Africa. By 1909 he had moved to the American Museum of Natural History in New York, and joined President Theodore Roosevelt's year-long safari, sponsored by the Smithsonian Institute. On that trip, while hunting on Mount Kenya with his team, Akeley was attacked and pinned to the ground by an enraged bull elephant. He was only saved after his first wife, Delia "Mickie" Denning, and two of his porters carried him off the mountain. During his recovery, and while suffering from fever, Akeley had a dream which was to become the inspiration for his greatest work: the Hall of African Mammals. Upon his return to America, Akeley began modeling small clay maquettes of the dioramas for the Hall, the first of these would become The Wounded Comrade. J.P. Morgan reputedly pledged his financial support for the African Hall after seeing just that model. The resulting bronze, produced at Roman Bronze Works in 1913, was exhibited at the Winter Exhibition of the National Academy of Design that same year, earning Akeley membership in the National Sculpture Society. The Wounded Comrade is a moving sculptural grouping of a central wounded elephant supported on either side by two others. The vignette was apparently inspired by an experience the artist had on safari in Uganda. Akeley's team unexpectedly disturbed a herd of over seven hundred elephants in a dense forest, scattering them in all directions and forcing Akeley's group to shoot to avoid being trampled. Akeley, having escaped, recalled looking back and seeing that one of those hit had been a large bull, which had gone on