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From the Cave To the Gallery
From the Cave To the Gallery
We’ve always lived amongst animals, and it would seem that they have been a source of artistic inspiration to us for a very long time.
Until recently, the oldest known example of representational art--art that is “an abstract representation of the world around the person or people” who created it--was dated 40,000 years ago. However, in 2024, a cave painting that is at least 51,200 years old was found on the Indonesian Island of Sulawesi. And each work of art features an animal.
Leading the team of scientists who discovered the painting was Adhi Agus Oktaviana, who believes the dating of the painting, while old, can only tell us so much.
“Humans have probably been telling stories for much longer than 51,200 years, but as words do not fossilise we can only go by indirect proxies like depictions of scenes in art – and the Sulawesi art is now the oldest such evidence by far that is known to archaeology,” Oktaviana said. ¹
The Island of Sulawesi cave painting seems to depict at least three human-like figures and a pig.
Prehistoric paintings don’t just feature animals--they seem to focus almost entirely upon them. Art historian John-Paul Stonard believes that this focus represents what was an important relationship.
“As so little has survived from prehistory, we can say very little with certainty, although it is striking that almost all of the images that have survived show other animals. This fact, I think, takes us to the heart of human image-making: we paint, draw and sculpt things close to us, things we depend on, things we need to understand, things we love--and also things we are afraid of, and struggle with. Animals were probably all of these things to early humans. One thing we know is that wherever early humans went they wiped out whole species, surely a way of assuring ascendency on the survival ladder. When I look at these early animal images I see a quest for knowledge, a sense of admiration and love, but also a feeling of mourning, a first confrontation with the inevitability and finality of death,” Stonard said. ²
Perhaps an example of the importance of animals to prehistoric humans, a study found that prehistoric artists more accurately depicted the way in which quadrupeds walk than their artistic counterparts in the 19th and 20th centuries. ³
Following prehistoric times, the relationship between humans and animals may have changed, but animals continued to be a common feature in art.
In the Middle Ages, some of the most popular illustrated texts were bestiaries--a collection of information about animals, both real and imagined. Along with observations about different animals, these bestiaries would often relate different animals with different moral lessons rooted in Christianity. ⁴
Leonardo da Vinci’s The Horse, which depicts a gait the study found to be unrealistic
An example of a bestiary, circa 1200-1210
During the Renaissance, and in contrast to the fanciful illustrations in bestiaries, there was an increased interest from artists to depict animals more accurately from observation. ⁵ Similarly, beginning in 1840s France, the artistic movement known as “Realism” began, and with it came an effort to avoid romanticizing any subject of art, including animals. ⁶
Despite being the subjects of a long history of artistic study and exploration, today, animals continue to be common features of many different art forms.
Barn Door Fowl (Rhode Island Reds) by William Huggins. Signed and dated 1860. Oil on artist's millboard: 11 1/2 x 15 1/2 inches.
¹ https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0vewjq4dxwo
² https://newhumanist.org.uk/2021/11/02/cave-paintings-of-animals-show-a-quest-for-knowledge
-a-sense-of-admiration-and-love/
³ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/cavemen-were-much-better-at-illustrating-
animals-than-artists-today-153292919/
⁴ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bestiary
⁵ https://www.researchgate.net/publication/337561010_Animal_Imagery_in_Renaissance
⁶ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realism_(art_movement)
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