Briscoe Western Art Museum

 Briscoe Western Art Museum

     By  

                                                            Mike Capron  

I just returned from the Briscoe Western Art Museum in San Antonio and the celebration of the National Day of the Cowboy.  A beautiful day spent with fellow artists of several different medias. I thoroughly enjoyed being associated with these artists and this museum.  The museum was full of art that people could enjoy and plenty of food from chuckwagons. There were three floors full of art and history.   The painting above was from an exhibit called “Survival of the Fittest”.   Survival of the Fittest features approximately 50 masterworks created by an influential group of painters known today as the Big Four. Working during the late 1800s and early 1900s, these artists established a vision of wildlife and wilderness that remains with us to this day. Their careers also influenced generations of artists interested in painting wildlife in the 20th century. Members of the Big Four include American Carl Rungius (born Germany, 1869 – 1959), Germans Richard Friese (1854 – 1918) and Wilhelm Kuhnert (1865 – 1926), as well as Bruno Liljefors (1860 – 1939) from Sweden.  Survival of the Fittest: Envisioning Wildlife and Wilderness with the Big Four, Masterworks from the Rijksmuseum Twenthe and the National Museum of Wildlife Art is curated by Adam Duncan Harris, Grainger/Kerr Director of the Carl Rungius Catalogue Raisonné and organized by the National Museum of Wildlife Art. The exhibition is sponsored in part by The City of San Antonio, Jan McCaleb Elliott, Betty Steiren Kelso Foundation, Jessica Elliott Middleton,  Debbie and John T. Montford | The Plum Foundation, The Texas Commission on the Arts, and Williams – Chadwick Family Charitable Fund of the San Antonio Area Foundation.    The above painting is by Bob Kuhn.     

The Briscoe Museum is located on Market Street in downtown San Antonio, right on the river walk. Lots of history and old footprints have been made on this piece of Texas. The Museum tells lots of these stories in the three floors of art on display.   

The painting below is another Bob Kuhn of some African water buffalo.  This exhibit of Survival of the Fittest runs until Sept 8,2024.