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William Holbrook Beard

His Majesty Receives, 1885

oil on canvas

18 x 24 1/8 in.

James E. Roberts Fund

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William Holbrook Beard began his career as a portrait painter. In 1856, he traveled to Italy, Germany and Switzerland with Hudson River School painters Thomas Worthington Whittredge and Albert Bierstadt. He subsequently worked in Buffalo, New York, and was instrumental in establishing the Buffalo Fine Arts Academy in 1862. Beard eventually settled in New York City and opened a studio in the Tenth Street Studio Building, which was then occupied by such famous artists as William Merritt Chase, Frederic Edwin Church, Albert Bierstadt and Winslow Homer. Beard became a popular animal painter, particularly rabbits, cats, monkeys, squirrels, and especially bears. He was both praised and criticized for his satirical paintings, which often substituted animals for humans.  He represented the human condition by painting allegorical and fantasy subjects depicting jealousy, pride, drunkenness, and greed.

His Majesty Receives is typical of the artist’s blend of humorous fantasy with satirical undertones. In Beard’s book Humor in Animals (1885), a fox describes his species as having a brutal sort of humor, because of its need to hunt and kill in order to survive. In this canvas the fox, swaggering in a royal robe, intimidates a rabbit while other rabbits and squirrels dressed like portly businessmen look on. Beard’s painting may lampoon an episode of American political or social history, though its specific reference is not known.

Reference

Ljiljana Ortolja-Baird. Animals in Art (National Gallery Series). New York: Watson-Guptil Publications, 2000. ISBN-13: 978-0823003396