Untitled Bison by Ernest Thompson Seton. Highlights of the Academy for the Love of Learning collection of Seton Drawings and Paintings/All image rights reserved.
ALL# 0804 Watercolor or ink wash and pencil on paper. 5.1 x 9.5 cm. Dated 1883. Signed: E.E.Thomps (verso).
This wonderful diminutive work features giant creatures. I am quite taken by the action conveyed by the then 23-year-old Seton. It could have been painted somewhere in Manitoba or in Toronto or possibly even New York. Did he see them in action in a zoo or is this a work of his imagination? Either way, the muscular power of the two great head-butting beasts is powerfully conveyed. Seton first made a pencil sketch, then painted over to achieve the effect of motion.
Buffalo Bones
Seton was too late to see live Buffalo in Manitoba, finding instead bones not yet returned to the earth the Central Plains Region west of Winnipeg. The attempted extermination of this creature is surely one of the most horrific and shameful episodes in the Euro-American tradition of this continent.
Seton may have been the first researcher to estimate the ancient population of this creature; his figures are still cited today. In Lives of Game Animals, he estimated that at least 75,000,000 of the creatures may have roamed the plains and forests. (Vol. III, Pg. 655)