For the majority of the rest of the history of art in the Western world, wildlife art was rare or absent, because art was mostly dominated by narrow perspectives on reality such as religions. It is only recently, when arts broke free of being dominated by particular narrow views of the world, that wildlife art begins to flourish.

Another factor in the recent proliferation of wildlife art is the difficulty of the subject . . . wild animals and birds are generally difficult to find, and don't stay still long enough for an artist to work easily. Recent developments such as photography have made a huge difference to wildlife art, because it is now possible for the artist to capture an accurate and instant image of the subject, as well as sketching and remembering their personal subjective view of the moment, thus making wildlife art considerably easier to accomplish both accurately and artistically. Of course, this also opens up the possibility of making a painting by simply copying a photograph, a practice which is rightly criticised in the art world, yet makes money for many so-called "artists". Genuine fine art wildlife photography is however an important part of the wildlife art world today as photography soon became recognised as an artform in its own right.

In non-Western art, the situation is somewhat different, with animals and birds being a common feature of visual representations throughout most ages.

The history of wildlife art can also be examined from the point of view of the changing perspective on wildlife itself, beginning as both a major source of food and an obvious feature of everyday life, then becomming a factor to be avoided as civilisation begins to separate itself from the natural world. Religions tended to ignore or dislike the natural world through most of Western history, and this was reflected in the art created in times dominted by religion. More recently, some movements focussed on particular views of the natural world, while others were polarised away from nature. Wildlife was viewed as a curiosity as more distant areas of the world were first explored, as sport (for hunting), as symbols for other things, and eventually as something valuable and worth conserving in its own right. These changing views of wildlife and the natural world have had a great influence on the evolution of wildlife art through the ages.

The History and development of Wildlife Art . . .

Wildlife art in Pre-history.

Animal and bird art appears in some of the earliest known examples of artistic creation, such as cave paintings.

The earliest known cave paintings were made around 40,000 years ago, the Upper Paleolithic period. These art works appear, from evidence, to be more than decoration of living areas as they are often in caves which are difficult to access and don't show any signs of human habitation. Wildlife was a significant part of the daily life of humans at this time, particularly in terms of hunting for food, and this is reflected in their art. Religion is also thought to be a significant factor in the depiction of animals and birds at this time.

Probably the most famous of all cave painting, in Lascaux (France), includes the image of a wild horse, which is one of the earliest known examples of wildlife art. Another example of wildlife cave painting is that of reindeer in the Spanish cave of Cueva de las Monedas, probably painted at around the time of the last ice-age. The oldest known cave paintings (maybe around 32,000 years old) are also found in France, at the Grotte Chauvet, and depict horses, rhinoceros, lions, buffalo, mammoth and humans, often hunting.

Wildlife painting is one of the commonest forms of cave art. Subjects are often of large wild animals, including bison, horses, aurochs, lions, bears and deer, and the treatment seems to be conceptual rather than naturalistically visual. This suggests that the cave paintings of wildlife represent the subjective views of the artists about the animals and birds, rather than a direct visual interpretation of their objective environment. This view would also seem to make sense given the life-style of the people involved, who needed to hunt wild animals and birds for their day-to-day survival, so had a lot of attention focussed on wildlife as it related to their own survival, both as a source of food and also as potential danger. The people of this time were probably relating to the natural world mostly in terms of their own survival, rather than separating themselves from it, as those who's survival does not depend so directly on it, have the luxury of being able to do.

Cave paintings found in Africa also often include animals. Cave painting from America includes animal species such as rabbit, puma, lynx, deer, wild goat and sheep, whale, turtle, tuna, sardine, octopus, eagle, and pelican, and is noted for its high quality and remarkable color. Rock paintings made by Australian Aborigines include so-called "X-ray" paintings, which show the bones and organs of the animals they depict. Paintings on caves/rocks in Australia include local species of animals as well as fish and turtles.

Animal carvings were also made during the Upper Palaeolithic period . . . which constitute the earliest examples of wildlife scuplture. During the Neolithic period, sculptures include animals such as those from 10th and 7th Millennium BC.

In Africa, bushman rock paintings, at around 8000 BC, clearly depict antelope and other animals.

The advent of the Bronze age in Europe, from the 3rd Millennium BC, led to a dedicated artisan class, due to the beginnings of specialisation resulting from the surpluses available in these advancing societies. During the Iron age, mythical and natural animals were a common subject of artworks, often involving decoration of objects such as plates, knives and cups. Celtic influences affected the art and arcitecture of local Roman colonies, and outlasted them, surviving into the historic period.

Wildlife Art in the Ancient world (Classical art).

History is considered to begin when writing is invented. The earliest examples of ancient art originate from Egypt and Mesopotamia.

The great art traditions have their origins in the art of one of the six great ancient "classical" civilizations: Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece, Rome, India, or China. Each of these great civilisations developed their own unique style of art.

Animals were regularly depicted in Chinese art, including some examples from the 4th Centuary which depict stylised mythological creatures and thus are rather a departure from pure wildlife art. Earlier art, such as from the Han Dynasty (202 BC - 220 AD) symbolises geomancy and other spiritual influences, and includes men hunting on horseback. Ming dynasty Chinese art features pure wildlife art, including ducks, swans, sparrows, tigers, and other animals and birds, with increasing realism and detail. The Terracotta Army, 210BC, includes life-size terracotta horses.

In the 7th Century, Elephants, monkeys and other animals were depicted in stone carvings in Ellora, India. These carvings were religious in nature, yet depicted real animals rather than more mythological creatures, and the art created in that location spans longs periods of time as well as several different religious influences.

Ancient Egyptian art includes many animals, used within the symbolic and highly religious nature of Egyptian art at the time, yet showing considerable anatomical knowledge and attention to detail. Animal symbols are used within the famous Egyptian Hyrogliphic symbolic language. The Egyptian Gods were often depicted as part animal, such as the famous Sphynx and Anubis the jackal-god.

Olmic art (South America) often depicts representations of a divine jaguar.

The Minoans, the greatest civilization of the Bronze Age, created naturalistic designs including fish, squid and birds in their middle period. By the late Minoan period, wildlife was still the most characteristic subject of their art, with increasing variety of species.

The art of the nomadic people of the Mongolian steppes is primarily animal art, such as gold stags, and is typically small in size as befits their travelling lifestyle.

Aristotle (384-322 BC) suggested the idea of photography, but this wasn't put into practice until 1826.

The Medieval period, AD 200 to 1430

This period includes early Christian and Byzantine art, as well as Romanesque and Gothic art (1200 to 1430). Most of the art which survives fom this period is religious, rather than realistic, in nature. Animals in art at this time were used as symbols rather than representations of anything in the real world. So very little wildlife art as such could be said to exist at all during this period.

An example of this is "the white hart" which, although of an originally wild creature, is used very much as a symbol, with golden chains around its neck. Similarly depicted is an image of two monkeys by Gentile da Fabriano, which shows the monkeys as captive by depicting chains holding them. So the use of wild animals in art at this time is not so much about the wildlife itself, as what the wildlife symbolise to the humans who owned it.

Renaissance wildlife art, 1300 to 1602.

This arts movement began from ideas which initially energed in Florence. After centuries of religious domination of the arts, Renaissance artists began to move more towards ancient mystical themes and depicting the world around them, away from purely Christian subject matter. New techniques, such as oil painting and portable paintings (most art prior to this had been built into permanant structures, such as church murals), as well as new ways of looking such as use of perspective and realistic depiction of textures and lighting, led to great changes in artistic expression.

The two major schools of Renaissance art were the Italian school who were heavily influenced by the art of ancient Greece and Rome, and the northern Europeans (usually said to originate in the 16thC with Jan van Eyck) . . . Flemish, Dutch and Germans, who were generally more realistic and less idealised in their work. The art of the Renaissance reflects the revolutions in ideas and science which occurred in this Reformation period. The early Renaissance led to the High Renaissance, which in turn developed into the Mannerist period, which depicts greater emotional intensity and disturbance in its arts.

The early Renaissance features artists such as Botticelli, and Donatello. Animals are still being used symbolically and in mythological context at this time, for example "Pegasus" by Jacopo de'Barbari.

The best-known artist of the high Renaissance is Leonardo-Da-Vinci. Although most of his artworks depict people and technology, he occasionally incorporates wildlife into his images, such as the swan in "Leda and the swan", and the animal portrayed in his "lady with an ermine", "sketch of a horse", "rearing hourse" and "studies of cat movements and positions". His studies of human embryos are in some ways closer to wildlife art than anything else, as they show interest in natural forms and structures.

Durer is regarded as the greatest artist of the Northern European Renaissance, and as well as wildlife art was the first kown Western artist to paint pure landscape. Albrecht Durer was particularly known for his wildlife art, including pictures of hare, rhinoceros, bullfinch, little owl, squirrels, the wing of a blue roller, monkey, and blue crow.

The painting "Bildfolge zur Frühgeschichte der Menschheit, Szene: Waldbrand" by Renaissance artist Peiro di Cosimo (1488-1507), depicts a scene with birds including stork, and lion, deer, cows and other animals.

Baroque wildlife art, 1600 to 1730.

This important artistic age, encouraged by the Roman Catholic Church and the aristocracy ofthe time, features such well-known great artists as Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Rubens, Velazquez, Poussin, and Vermeer. Paintings of this period often use lighting effects to increase the dramatic effect.

Wildlife art of this period includes a lion, and "goldfinch" by Carel Fabrituis as well as domestic animals such as a study of cows by Rubens.

Melchior de Hondecoeter was a specialist animal and bird artist in the baroque period with paintings including "revolt in the poultry coup", "cocks fighting" and "palace of amsterdam with exotic birds".

The Rococo art period was a later (1720 to 1780) decadent sub-genre of the Baroque period, and includes such famous painters as Canaletto, Gainsborough and Goya. Wildlife art of the time includes "Dromedary study" by Jean Antoine Watteau, and "folly of beasts" by Goya.

Jean-Baptiste Oudry was a Rococo wildlife specialist, who often painted commissions for royalty.

Some of the earliest scientific wildlife illustration was also created at around this time, for example from artist William Lewin who published a book illustrating British birds. This project was started before printing was applied to such publications, so the first edition was painted entirely by hand.

Wildlife art in the 18th to 19th C.

Well-known artists of this period include John Constable 1802, Eugène Delacroix 1830, J. M. W. Turner 1838, Gustave Courbet 1849-1850, Claude Monet 1872, Pierre-Auguste Renoir 1876, Édouard Manet 1882, Vincent van Gogh 1889, Paul Gauguin 1897-1898, Georges Seurat 1884-1886 and Paul Cézanne 1906.

In 1743, Mark Catesby published his documentation of the flora and fauna of the explored areas of the New World, which helped encourage both business investment and interest in the natural history of the continent.

In response to the decadance of the Rococo period, neo-classicism arose in the late 18th Century (1750 - 1830 ). This genre is more ascetic, and contains much sensuality, but none of the spontaneity which characterises the later Romantic period. This movement focussed on the supremacy of natural order over man's will, a concept which culimated in the romantic art depiction of disasters and madness.

"Horse for an equestrian statue", by Antionio Canova, is an example of the portrayal of animals in neo-classical art.

François Le Vaillant was a bird illustrator (and ornithologist) around this time.

Georges Cuvier, (1769-1832), painted accurate images of more than 5000 fish, relating to his studies of comparative organismal biology.

Edward Hicks is an example of an American wildife painter of this period, who's art was dominated by his religious context.

Sir Edwin Henry Landseer was also painting wildlife at this time, in a style strongly influenced by dramatic emotional judgements of the animals involved.

This focus towards nature led the painters of the Romantic era (1790 - 1880) to transform landscape painting, which had previously been a minor art form, into an art-form of major importance. The romantics rejected the ascetic ideals of Neo-Classicalism.

Photography had been described in fiction from 1774, and the camera-obscura was invented far earlier (and may have been used to project images for artists to work from as early as the 16th C), but the practical use of photography began in around 1826, although it was a while before wildlife became a common subject for its use. Photography became common for use in portraiture around 1893. The first color photograph was taken in 1861, but easy-to-use color plates only becama available in 1907.

In 1839 the painter Paul de la Roche declared that photography meant the death of painting. At this time, photography and painting were thought to be in inevitable conflict. While photography did dramatically decrease the use of painting for portraits, the two art forms were soon recognised to be mostly independant, and painting continued to flourish.

In 1853 Bisson and Manté created some of the first known wildlife photography.

In France, Gaspar-Félix Tournacho, "Nadar" (1820-1910) applied the same aesthetic principles used in painting, to photography, thus beginning the artistic discipline of fine art photography. Fine Art photography Prints were also reproduced in Limited Editions, making them more valuable.

Jaques-Laurent Agasse was one of the foremost painters of animals in Europe around the end of the 18th C and the beginning of the 19th. His animal art was unusually realistic for the time, and while he was best known for his paintings of horses, he did paint wild animals too, including giraffe and leopards.

Romantic wildlife art includes "zebra", "cheetah, stag and two Indians", at least two monkey paintings, a loepard and "portrait of a royal tiger" by George Stubbs who also did many paintings of horses, some of them in a natural setting, such as "Grey stallion with mares and foals", as well as dogs (particularly foxhounds).

One of the great wildlife sculptors of the Romantic period was Antoine-Louis Barye. Barye was also a wildlife painter, who demonstrated the typical dramatic concepts and lighting of the romantic movement.

Delacroix painted a tiger attacking a horse, which as is commonn with Romantic paintings, paints subject matter on the border between human (a domesticated horse) and the natural world (a wild tiger). Another typical example of this depiction of wild animals within a human context, is the lion in the "Christian martyr" context, painted by Jean-Leon Gerome (an "orientalist").

Accademic art (a synthesis of the different features of neo-classical and Romantic art, which occurred in France) includes wildlife in "illustration from 20,000 leagues under the sea" by Alphonse Marie de Neuville.

In America, this landscape painting movement of the Romantic era, was known as the Hudson River School (1850s - c. 1880). These landscapes occasionally include wildlife, such as the deer in "Dogwood" and "valley of the yosemite" by Albert Bierstadt, and more obviously in his "buffalo trail", but the focus is on the landscape rather than the wildlife in it.

Wildlife artist Ivan Ivanovitch Shishkin demonstrates beautiful use of light in his landscape-oriented wildlife art.

William Turner painted "heron with a fish", which is one of his most straight-forward and realistic studies, compared to most of his work which verges on abstraction. Although Romantic painting focussed on nature, it rarely protrayed wild animals, tending much more towards the borders between man and nature, such as domesticated animals and people in landscapes rather than the landscapes themselves. This can be seen as a somewhat transitory phase, particularly in such examples as most of Turners works, which are really abstract landscapes, yet with human elements included to prevent them being fully abstract or natural and thus keep them within the acceptable limits of the time. Romantic art seems to be about nature, but usually only shows nature from a human perspective, rather than portraying nature as something in and of itself.

Audubon was perhaps the most famous painter of wild birds at around this time, with a distinctive American style, yet painting the birds realistically and in context, although in somewhat over-dramatic poses. His published books on birds are considered to be some of the greatest color picture books ever made. As well as birds, he also painted the mammals of America, although these works of his are somewhat less well known. Alexander Wilson had already painted the birds of America, but Audobon's version became far more popular. Audubon's technique was first to shoot the birds, (often more than 100 a day), then mount them and make paintings. His paintings were reproduced (initially as hand-colored aquatints) by skilled copyists.

At around the same time In Europe, Rosa Bonheur was finding fame as a wildlife artist (alongside her even more well-known rural scenes).

The Symbolist movement (1880 - 1910, France/Belgium, and Russian Symbolism 1884 - c. 1910), while often using floral subject matter, as in the famous paintings my Gustav Klimt, rarely uses animals. Pegasus by Odilon redon is one of the rare examples of use of an animal in Symbolist art.

Realism emerged in response to the poverty and desperation which often accompanied the beginnings of the industrial revolution. The art depicted the poverty and desparation of the urban landscape. Some of the artists in this movement, such as Manet and Edgar Degas, overlap with the Impressionist movement.

Amongst Realist art, two drawings of horses by Edgar Degas, and one by Rosa Bonheur come close to being wildlife art (as they are depicted free from human context), while "the raven" by Manet and "stags at rest" by Rosa Bonheur are genuine wildlife art. However in this artistic movement animals are much more usually depicted obviously as part of a human context, as in the oxen in "ploughing in Nivernais" by Rosa Bonheur, the horses in "racehorses in a landscape" by Edgar Degas, the sheep in "shepherdess and her flock" by Jean-Francois Millet, and the obviously domestic geese in "the watersplash" by Henry Herbert La Thangue.

In response to realism, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood attempted to return art to a former state of purity. One of the few animals painted in this genre is "the prize bull" by Willian Davis. Wild animals were not typical subject matter for the Pre-raphaelites.

The last third of the 19th C saw the popularity of Impressionism (sometimes called Luminism, 1863 - 1890, France, and American Impressionism 1880), which includes such artists as Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro, Alfred Sisley, and Edgar Degas. This art movement was started by a few young art students in Paris in 1865, as a form of rebelion against the existing rigid art establishement, and took about twenty years to be accepted. The post-impressionists, such as Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, and Georges Seurat, and Paul Cezanne, lead up to the beginnings of Modernism. The Impressionists focus on the concept of light and the fleeting moment of time, and while they often use floral and bottanical subject matter, as well as landscape which if their primary subject, wildlife is seldom depicted in their art.

Exceptions to this are the depiction of fish in "angler's prize" by Theodore Clement Steele, and the artist Joseph Crawhall who was a specialist wildlife artist strongly influenced by impressionism.

At this time, accurate scientific wildlife illustration was also being created. One name known for this kind of work in Europe is John Gould, athough his wife Elizabeth was the one who actually did most of the illustrations for his books on birds. He was involved in the identification of species discovered by Darwin on his famous voyage on the Beagle.

Les Nablis (1888 - 1900, France) produced paintings such as "jungle orchids and hummingbirds" by Martin Johnson Heade, which features the flowers and the landscape more than the birds. Paul Ranson created several prints of fish.

Post-impressionism (1886 - 1905, France) includes Vincent van Gough as its most famous artist as well as Seurat (the most famous exponent of pointilism (Pointillism 1880s, France)) and Gauguin. There is a water-bird in Rousseau's "snake charmer", and Rousseau's paintings, which include wildlife, are sometimes considered Post-impressionist (as well as Fauvist, see below).

Fauvism (1904 - 1909, France) often considered the first "modern" art movement, re-thought use of color in art. The most famous fauvist is Matisse, who depicts birds and fish in is "polynesie la Mer" and birds in his "Renaissance". Other wildlife art in this movement includes a tiger in "Surprised! Storm in the Forest" by Rousseau, a lion in his "sleeping Gypsy" and a jungle animal in his "exotic landscape". Georges Braque depicts a bird in many of his artworks, including "L'Oiseaux Bleu et Gris", and his "Astre et l'Oiseau".

The Arts and Crafts movement (1880 - 1910, Britain) rose up in opposition to mass-production, focussing on the individually created forms of medieval craftsmanship. This genre makes extensive use of floral patterns, but avoids wild animals.

Ukiyo-e-printmaking (Japanese wood-block prints, originating from 17th C) was becomming known in the West, during the 19th C, and had a great influence on Western painters, particularly in France. The most famous example of this genre is "The great wave at Kanagawa" by Hokusai Katsushika.

Wildlife art in this genre includes several untitled prints (owl, bird, eagle) by Ando Hiroshige, and "crane", "cat and butterfly", "wagtail and wisteria" by Hokusai Katsushika, who influenced the late 19thC impressionists such as Van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec and Whistler, who greatly admired these traditional Japanese artists.

Art Nouveau (1890 - 1914, France) re-introduced abstract floral patterns, which had existed in pre-classical, barbarian and non-western cultures many centuries before, to Western art, as well as using design as art.

Art Nouveau glass ornaments sometimes included wildlife such as dragon-flies amongst more common floral themes. The cats which feature in the work of Theophile Alexandre Steinlen are sometimes somewhat tending towards wildlife artwork, as they show the animal outside any human context. People, landscapes and floral subjects are however the most common themes in Art Nouveau.

Wildlife art in the 20th Century, Contemporary art, postmodern art, etc.

Changing from the relatively stable views of a mechanical universe held in the 19th-century, the 20th-century shatters these views with such advances as Einstein's Relativity and Freuds sub-conscious psychological influence. The pace of innovation was also accellerating up to the 1930's, by which time people were subconsciously so adverse to too much change that the rate of change (for example, as measured by the number of new inventions per year) actually decreases from that point to today.

The systems which had been gradually developed by the whole of the Western Art tradition, for about a thousand years, had been developed as far as they could stretch, and began to break down, with such new forms as abstract painting and ambient music. The greater degree of contact with the rest of the world also had a huge influence on Western arts, such as the influence of African and Japanese art on Pablo Picasso, for example.

American Wildlife artist Carl Runguis spans the end of the 19th and the beginnings of the 20th Centuarys. His style evolved from tightly rendered scientific-influenced style, through impressionist influence, to a more painterly approach.

The golden age of illustration includes mythical wildlife "The firebird" by Edmund Dulac, and "tile design of Heron an Fish" by Walter Crane.

The American art movement of Contemporary Realism occasionally features wildlife, such as Andrew Wyeths painting "crows", which shows a small number of distant crows in a large, otherwise empty, landscape, and thus seems to be more about the context of the wildlife and the landscape it appears in, rather than its form or appearance.

Cubism (1907 - 1914, France) developed from Pablo Picasso's practical experiments with Cezanne's concept that nature could be reduced to cubes, spheres and cones. George Braque's birds can be defined as Analytical Cubist (this genre was jointly developed by Braque and Picasso from 1908 to 1912), (as well as Fauvist). Fernand Leger also depicts birds in his "Les Oiseaux".

There was also accurate scientific wildlife illustration being done at around this time, such as those done by America illustrator Louis Agassiz Fuertes who painted birds in America as well as other countries.

Expressionism (1905 - 1930, Germany). "Fox", "monkey Frieze, "red deer", and "tiger", etc by Franz Marc qualify as wildlife art, although to contemporary viewers seem more about the style than the wildlife.

Postmodernism as an art genre, which has developed since the 1960's, looks to the whole range of art history for its inspiration, as contrasted with Modernism which focusses on its own limited context. A different yet related view of these genres is that Modernism attempts to search for an idealised truth, where as post-modernism accepts the impossibility of such an ideal. This is reflected, for example, in the rise of abstract art, which is an art of the indefinable, after about a thousand years of art mostly depicting definable objects.

Magic realism (1960's Germany) often included animals and birds, but usually as a minor feature among human elements, for example, swans and occasionally other animals in many paintings by Michael Parkes.

In 1963, Ray Harm (working with art collector and businessman Wood Hannah) released the first ever Limited-Edition art prints, thus revolutionising the art market. Ray is also a significant bird artist, and critic of those who produce wildlife art by copying photographs.

Abstract art is generally considered to begin with the Russian painter, printmaker and art theorist Wassily Kandinsky, but many of Turners landscapes are really abstract paintings with a small realistic element added to make his works approachable by the populace at the time. Kandinsky postulated that pure abstract art could express pure spirituality. This was happening at around the same time that music was developing beyond the context of definable steps (notes) into ambient music (which, together with abstract art are arguably the biggest revolution in the Western art tradition for a thousand years).

The American Abstract Expressionists also developed their genre from a desire to escape the constraints of European standards of aesthetics. The move towards abstraction also in turn led to the development of new ways to look at definable objects, such as Pop art.

Robert Rauschenberg's "american eagle", a Pop Art (mid 1950's onwards) piece, uses the image of an eagle as a symbol rather than as something in its own right, and thus is not really wildlife art. The same applies to Any Warhol's "Butterflys".

The Futurist painting "Magical fauna and flora" by Fortunato Depero, portrays wild animals, but uses them as symbols.

Salvador Dali, the best known of Surrealist (1920's France, onwards) artists, uses wild animals in some of his paintings, for example "Landscape with Butterflys", but within the context of surrealism, depictions of wildlife become conceptually something other than what they might appear to be visually, so they might not really be wildlife at all. Other examples of wildlife in Surrealist art are Rene Magritte's "La Promesse" and "L'entre ed Scene".

Op art (1964 onwards) such as M. C. Escher's "Sky and Water" shows ducks and fish, and "mosaic II" shows many animals and birds, but they are used as image design elements rather than the art being about the animals.

Roger Tory Peterson created fine wildlife art, which although being clear illustrations for use in his book which was the first real field guide to birds, are also aesthetically worthy bird paintings.

Young British Artists (1988 onwards). Damien Hirst uses a shark in a tank as one of his artworks. It is debatable whether this piece could be considered as wildlife art, because even though the shark is the focus of the piece, the piece is not really about the shark itself, but probably more about the shark's effect on the people viewing it. It could be said to be more a use of wildlife in/as art, than a work of wildlife art.

Wildlife art continues to be popular today, with such artists as Robert Bateman being very highly regarded, although in his case somewhat controvercial for his release of Limited-Edition prints which certain fine-art critics deplore.