Wilhelm Kuhnert

• Name — Wilhelm Kuhnert • Born — 28 September 1865 • Birthplace — Oppeln, Prussia • Died — 11 February 1926 • Place of death — Flims, Switzerland • Occupation — Painter • Illustration — Migrating Elephants • Illustration — Hyena (1905) • Illustration — Indian elephant, etching

Kuhnert was born in Oppeln in 1865. After the end of his technical-commercial apprenticeship at the age of 17, Kuhnert was a scholarship student at the Berlin University of the Arts from 1883 to 1887. From his home in Berlin, he embarked on travels to Scandinavia, Egypt, East Africa and India to make landscape and animal studies. His favorite motif was the African lion. In 1901 Kuhnert was the illustrator for zoologist Johann Wilhelm Haacke's book Animal Life on Earth. In 1903, he became one of the many artists selected to provide illustrations and design trading cards for the Cologne chocolate company, Stollwerck. He also provided some illustrations for the 1890 edition of Brehms Tierleben. Contrary to the practice of his peers, Kuhnert distinguished himself by sketching tropical animals in the wild, not in zoos. He made pictures by sketching, etching, watercolor, and oil painting. Kuhnert is considered one of the most important German animal painters of his time. Kuhnert was a keen and skilled hunter himself; he returned to Africa year after year in the hunt for both game and subjects for his art.

Kuhnert died on February 11, 1926, during a recovery stay in Flims, Switzerland. His grave is in the Stahnsdorf South-Western Cemetery in Berlin.

In 1894, he married 18-year-old Emilie Caroline Wilhelmine Ottilie Alvine Herdikerhoff. They had a daughter, Emilie. The couple divorced in 1909 while Emilie was a student in Ceylon. Kuhnert married for the second time to Gerda von Jankowski in 1913. In 1925, on his 60th birthday, she died.

• Six colored photoplates for Deutsch-Ostafrika im Aufstand 1905/06 (Berlin 1909) by Gustav Adolf Graf von Götzen

An orang-utan sitting on a branch of a tree in a jungle. Colour lithograph after W. A groups of yaks grazing in a mountainous landscape. Colour lithograph after W. A duck billed platypus (watermole). Colour lithograph after W. A spiny anteater (spiny echnidae). Colour lithograph after W. Two weasels in a corn field. Colour lithograph after W. A crested porcupine. Colour lithograph after W. A herd of bisons. Recorded as painter, illustrator, animal painter and artist.

• Animal Portraiture (Text by Richard Lydekker). Frederick Warne & Co. London 1912 • Im Lande meiner Modelle (In the Land of My Models). Leipzig 1918. Reissued by HardPress (2013) • Meine Tiere: die Radierungen Wilhelm Kuhnerts (My Animals: The Etchings of Wilhelm Kuhnert). Berlin 1925

• Angelika Grettmann-Werner: Wilhelm Kuhnert (1865-1926). Tierdarstellung zwischen Wissenschaft und Kunst. Hamburg 1981 • Hansjörg Werner: Wer war Wilhelm Kuhnert. Der grosse deutsche Tiermaler. • Vollständiger Katalog der Originalradierungen des Künstlers (Full Catalog of Original Etchings by the Artist). Berlin 1927