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Overview
Gladwell Patterson have long championed David’s artistic and charitable work, across the three generations of the Fuller family. Together with the David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation, the gallery held the first retrospective exhibition of David’s work since his death in January 2019.
David Shepherd stands as one of the most influential wildlife painters of the past century, an artist whose deep affinity for the natural world shaped a career of remarkable breadth and significance. His paintings, at once commanding and tender, reflect a lifelong bond with the animals of Africa, a connection forged in Kenya in 1960, where a commission for the RAF set him on an artistic path that would define his life’s work. It was there, confronted by the beauty of the wild and the brutality of its threats, that David’s vocation as both artist and conservationist took root.
The power of his paintings lies not only in their technical mastery: the confident sweep of his brush, careful orchestration of tone and balance between photorealism and impressionist breadth. Elephants emerge with monumental grace, tigers with a quiet, unstoppable presence; even the vast African landscapes serve not as backdrop but as a stage upon which each animal’s dignity is affirmed. What resonates most is the empathy that animates every canvas, a quality that reflects David’s unwavering belief in the value of the wildlife he devoted his career to protecting.
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Works
David Shepherd British, 1931-2017
The KillOil on Canvas102 x 203 cms / 40 x 80 inchesSigned 'David Shepherd' (lower right)Price on ApplicationDescription
The Kill depicts a pair of lions together with their recent kill, a young African buffalo. In the wild, lions and buffalo maintain a notorious rivalry. The male and female lion in this scene have proven themselves to be brave and skilful hunters with their young buffalo prey. There is however a distinct wariness apparent in the female lion as she lies poised, ears pricked, head cocked, and with widened eyes. The male lion too averts his gaze to look in the same direction, as perhaps there is a threat of vengeance-seeking buffalo that are approaching in the distance before them; an encounter which we, as the viewer, are immersed in. The formal qualities of the work act as to recreate a lifelike, first-hand experience from nature. By the use of subtle shifts between elements that are in and out of focus the scene has been captured in the way as it would be seen by the human eye, rather than by as it would with a camera. Broad, sweeping brushstrokes and thick impasto texture transform the work from a painting towards a physical manifestation of the wild. The artist’s impeccable accuracy with his representation of colour, light, and tone cements why David Shepherd is unmatched in his field, as he takes us as close to his moment of witnessing these creatures in their natural environment as is possible in any medium.
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