35 L4-Animals in Art

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Oxford Read and Discover level 4 Animals In Art by Richard Northcott

Introduction Look at these two pictures of a hare. One is a photo, and the other is a painting. The photo is interesting, but in the painting the artist really helps us to look at the hare. We see its long claws, its fur, and its whiskers. What animals do we see in art? Where can we see animals in art? What are the oldest animal pictures? Discover! Now read and discover more about animals in art, all around the world!

Chapter 1 Animal Shapes Animals are different from people. Animals can't talk, but they can do many other things. Some animals can run faster than people. Most birds and insects can fly. Cats can climb trees better than people. Here are drawings of a cat and a dog by an artist called Leonardo da Vinci. He was born in Florence, now in Italy. He wanted to show an animal's shape when it does different things. The dog is sitting. The cat is washing. Their shapes are interesting because they are different from ours. This painting is by a Korean artist called Byeon Sang-byeok. It shows two cats. The cats are not friends. Maybe they are going to fight. The artist shows this in their shapes. He used gray and black inks for the cats, to show their fur. Their fur is nice and soft. Many artists draw pictures of animals because their shapes are interesting and beautiful. Discover! Sometimes when artists paint animals, they first do a fast drawing. Then, later, they look at their drawing and do their painting more slowly.

Chapter 2 The Oldest Animal Pictures A long time ago, people lived in caves. They had no paper. They painted animals on the walls of their caves. In a cave in Spain, there's an amazing painting of a bison. This painting is about 15,000 years old. Discover! A girl called Maria Sanz de Sautuola discovered the cave paintings at Altamira in 1879. She was only nine years old. She was in the caves with her father. There are beautiful paintings of giraffes and other animals in some caves in Libya. They are not as old as the cave paintings in Spain, but they are interesting because they show changes in our world. When people did these paintings, about 8,000 years ago, there were giraffes and trees in this part of Africa. Now it's a desert. In the Nazca Desert in Peru you can see amazing pictures of animals, but you have to be in a plane. About 2,000 years ago, people drew giant pictures on the ground. They drew monkeys, birds, and spiders. Some of these pictures are bigger than a playground!

Chapter 3 Wild Animals When artists paint a wild animal, they sometimes show the animal in its home. For example, they paint the animal in the jungle or in the mountains. In this painting we see a stag, and we also see its home in the mountains. This painting is realistic. This means that the stag looks like a real stag— it's almost like a photo. The painting is by a British artist called Edwin Landseer. He painted it in 1851. In 1891, a French artist called Henri Rousseau painted a picture of a tiger. The painting is called Tiger in a Tropical Storm (Surprised!). The artist shows the tiger and its home in the jungle. Most of this painting is trees, other plants, and rain. We see a tiger, and we also see the tiger's world. The tiger is surprised because there's a storm. Do you think this is a realistic painting?