Skip main navigation
The Brooklyn Museum

Luce Center: Browse




Representations of Animals

The representation of animals in art is as old as prehistoric cave painting. Native American artists and European settlers in America alike depicted animals both as decoration that recorded the natural world and as symbolic or spiritual images. Colonial painters introduced domestic pets in portraits of youngsters as elegant props that also suggested a parallel between training animals and bringing up children. Domesticated animals such as sheep and cows populate many American landscape paintings as symbols of rural harmony. Wild animals, observed with intense realism, were very popular with later nineteenth-century sculptors in bronze, as seen in Carl Akeley’s elephants (13.14) and Alexander Phimister Proctor’s buffalo (14.565). In decorative arts, designers sometimes used animals as a sort of iconographic shorthand, as in a lavishly decorated porcelain tea set (68.87.31), where the goat on the handle of the milk pitcher indicates the contents of the vessel.

39 objects are included in this theme.
12.894 Alexander Phimister Proctor
Silver King, 1907

View object details...
12.895 Alexander Phimister Proctor
Elephant, or The Call, 1908

View object details...
12.896 Alexander Phimister Proctor
Puma, 1909

View object details...
12.897 Alexander Phimister Proctor
Elk, 1899

View object details...
12.899 Alexander Phimister Proctor
Setter, 1894

View object details...
13.14 Carl E. Akeley
The Wounded Comrade, 1913

View object details...
13.54 William Merritt Chase
Still Life, Fish, 1912

View object details...
14.554 Albert Pinkham Ryder
The Grazing Horse, mid 1870s

View object details...
14.565 Alexander Phimister Proctor
Buffalo, 1913

View object details...
14.589 Alexander Phimister Proctor
Princeton Tiger, 1908-1909

View object details...
24.552 Carl E. Akeley
The Old Man of Mikeno, 1923

View object details...
32.1602 Edwin Willard Deming
Buffalo, 1908

View object details...
32.2092.7 Emil Fuchs
Great Dane, 1893

View object details...
40.59a-b Eastman Johnson
A Ride for Liberty -- The Fugitive Slaves, ca. 1862

View object details...
40.177 American
Plate (Theodore Roosevelt), 1904

View object details...
40.225a-b Canton Glass Company
Bowl and Lid, "Jumbo" pattern, 1882

View object details...
40.259a-b American
Covered Dish (Spanish-American War), 1898

View object details...
40.340 Edward Hicks
The Peaceable Kingdom, ca. 1833-1834

View object details...
41.151 Unknown
Pierre Van Cortlandt, ca. 1731

View object details...
43.25 Union Porcelain Works
Century Vase, 1876

View object details...
44.1.20a-b American
Jug, 1860-1880

View object details...
48.195 Charles Deas
Prairie Fire, 1847

View object details...
54.158 Elie Nadelman
Resting Stag, ca. 1915

View object details...
68.87.31 Union Porcelain Works
Cream Pitcher, 1876

View object details...
68.87.37 Union Porcelain Works
Vase, ca. 1884

View object details...
68.87.63 Union Porcelain Works
Paperweight, 19th century

View object details...
87.116 Queens Art Pewter, Ltd.
Ashtray, ca. 1940

View object details...
1992.11.11 John B. Flannagan
Dragon Motif, 1932-1933

View object details...
1992.11.12 John B. Flannagan
Jonah and the Whale: Rebirth Motif, 1937

View object details...
1992.11.28 Georgia O'Keeffe
Ram's Head, White Hollyhock-Hills (Ram's Head and White Hollyhock, New Mexico), 1935

View object details...
1993.210 Platt Powell Ryder
Fireside Companion, 1889

View object details...
1994.58 Meriden Britannia Company
Plaque, ca. 1885

View object details...
1995.15 Alexander Roux
Sideboard, ca. 1855

View object details...
1996.179 American
Cane, 1865-1900

View object details...
1998.89 Cornelius & Co.
Candelabrum, ca. 1853

View object details...
1999.26.1 Augustus Aaron Wilson
Tiger, 1931

View object details...
1999.26.2 Augustus Aaron Wilson
Tiger, 1931

View object details...
2000.45 Napier
Mirror, ca. 1928

View object details...
2000.48 Unknown
Giraffe Head, 1850-1900

View object details...