- Gallery Text
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Beard was active in Buffalo and in New York City, where he had a studio in the 1860s in the famous Tenth Street Building alongside painters including John La Farge. He specialized in animal paintings whose anthropomorphized subjects satirize human folly. Painted shortly before Beard’s death, this work is his most macabre. Death, an animated corpse wearing a shroud, grips a withered tree and strangles a tiger with his bare hand. The bodies of other exotic animals — a lion, a camel, and an elephant — are strewn around a dark and desiccated wilderness. A red sun gleams eerily on the horizon. Beard likely studied the animals in what began as a menagerie in New York’s Central Park, or in P. T. Barnum’s American Museum on lower Broadway. He may have been inspired by notorious circus disasters of the time, including the death of Barnum’s prize elephant, Jumbo, who was struck by a train in 1885.
- Identification and Creation
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- Object Number
- 2002.65
- People
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William Holbrook Beard, American (Painesville, OH 1824 - 1900 New York, NY)
- Title
- Power of Death
- Classification
- Paintings
- Work Type
- painting
- Date
- c. 1889-1890
- Culture
- American
- Persistent Link
- https://hvrd.art/o/99764
- Physical Descriptions
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- Medium
- Oil on board
- Dimensions
- 53.7 x 44.1 cm (21 1/8 x 17 3/8 in.)
frame: 76.2 x 67.3 x 7 cm (30 x 26 1/2 x 2 3/4 in.)
- Provenance
- Acquired by Alexander Gallery, New York, before 1981
- Acquisition and Rights
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- Credit Line
- Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Purchase through the generosity of Howard E. Cox, Elizabeth Gosnell Miller, Mrs. John S. Hamlen, Lawrence J. Lasser, George Lewis, Michael Maher, James W. McGlothlin, Robert H. and Dale Mnookin, Thomas R. and Ann Schwarz, Charles O. Wood, III and Miriam M. Wood, and other friends in honor of James Cuno
- Accession Year
- 2002
- Object Number
- 2002.65
- Division
- European and American Art
- Contact
- am_europeanamerican@harvard.edu
- The Harvard Art Museums encourage the use of images found on this website for personal, noncommercial use, including educational and scholarly purposes. To request a higher resolution file of this image, please submit an online request.
- Publication History
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Samuel Green Wheeler Benjamin, "An American Humorist in Paint, William H. Beard, N.A.", The Magazine of Art (1882), V, pp. 14-19, p. 15
"William H. Beard Dead", The New York Times (February 21, 1900), p. 7
Maria Naylor, ed., The National Academy of Design Exhibition Record, 1861-1900 (New York, NY, 1973), vol. 1, p. 44.
William H. Gerdts, William Holbrook Beard: Animals in Fantasy, exh. cat., Alexandre Gallery (New York, NY, 1981), pp. 6, 11, 16, cover
Theodore E. Stebbins, Jr. and Melissa Renn, American Paintings at Harvard, Volume One: Paintings, Watercolors, and Pastels by Artists Born before 1826, Yale University Press (U.S.) and Harvard Art Museums (Cambridge and New Haven, 2014), pp. 35, 86, cat. 37, ill.
- Exhibition History
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Annual Exhibition, National Academy of Design, New York, 01/01/1890 - 12/31/1890
William Holbrook Beard: Animals in Fantasy, Alexander Gallery, New York, 04/21/1981 - 05/16/1981
32Q: 2130 19th Century, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, 11/16/2014 - 05/02/2022
- Subjects and Contexts
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Collection Highlights
Google Art Project
- Related Articles
- Related Media
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This record has been reviewed by the curatorial staff but may be incomplete. Our records are frequently revised and enhanced. For more information please contact the Division of European and American Art at am_europeanamerican@harvard.edu
