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The 14 Greatest Animal Artworks of All Time

by YPB Team

Thirty thousand years of animals on walls, canvas and paper, plus one twelve-metre terrier made of flowers.

  1. The Great Wave off Kanagawa — ranked #11
    The Great Wave off Kanagawa
    Hokusai's woodblock print, where the wave itself reads as a clawed animal above the boats.
    1000pts
  2. Whistlejacket — ranked #22
    Whistlejacket
    George Stubbs's life-size portrait of a rearing racehorse against a bare ground, with no rider and no landscape.
    873pts
  3. Dogs Playing Poker — ranked #33
    Dogs Playing Poker
    C. M. Coolidge's cigar-company commissions, the most mocked and most recognised animal paintings in America.
    753pts
  4. Bull Leaping Fresco — ranked #44
    Bull Leaping Fresco
    The Minoan fresco from Knossos showing acrobats vaulting a charging bull.
    668pts
  5. The Lion Hunt of Ashurbanipal — ranked #55
    The Lion Hunt of Ashurbanipal
    Assyrian palace reliefs from Nineveh, carved around 645 BC, and among the most admired animal sculpture ever cut.
    565pts
  6. Young Hare — ranked #66
    Young Hare
    Albrecht Durer's watercolour hare from 1502, painted hair by hair.
    565pts
  7. Guernica — ranked #77
    Guernica
    Picasso's bull and screaming horse at the centre of the twentieth century's most reproduced anti-war painting.
    439pts
  8. Chauvet Cave Lions — ranked #88
    Chauvet Cave Lions
    A panel of hunting lions drawn over thirty thousand years ago, the oldest known figurative animal art.
    439pts
  9. Puppy — ranked #99
    Puppy
    Jeff Koons's twelve-metre West Highland terrier planted in flowers outside the Guggenheim Bilbao.
    439pts
  10. The Hunters in the Snow — ranked #1010
    The Hunters in the Snow
    Bruegel's returning hunters and their exhausted dogs, the most famous winter painting in Western art.
    439pts
  11. Wolf and Fox Hunt — ranked #1111
    Wolf and Fox Hunt
    Rubens's crowded hunting scene, animals and horsemen tangled across four metres of canvas.
    439pts
  12. The Goldfinch — ranked #1212
    The Goldfinch
    Carel Fabritius's small 1654 panel of a chained bird, painted the year an explosion killed him.
    0pts
  13. Head of a Bear — ranked #1313
    Head of a Bear
    Leonardo da Vinci's silverpoint study, roughly seven centimetres square, which sold at Christie's in 2021 for a record £8.8 million.
    0pts
  14. Rhinoceros — ranked #1414
    Rhinoceros
    Durer's woodcut of an Indian rhinoceros he never saw, armour-plated and wrong in ways that fixed the animal's image for centuries.
    0pts

#Art37#Animals43#Classics488#Paintings11

Comments

Leonardo's bear's head, about seven centimetres square, sold for 8.8 million pounds: https://youpick.best/articles/bear-ranked-many-ways

YP
ypb-team·9h ago·
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