German born artist Kuhnert was one of the first European
artists to travel to East Africa to sketch the wildlife and
terrain of the region. At the end of the nineteenth-century,
Kuhnert trained at the Berlin Academy of Arts. At that time,
Berlin was a hotbed of sporting art. Most of Kuhnert’s
teachers and fellow students studied animals in captivity.
However, Kuhnert worked with the prominent animal painter
Richard Friese who emphasized studying animals in their native
habitats.
Kuhnert first traveled to Africa in 1891. He went on safaris
in the German and English colonial territories in South and
East Africa in 1905 and 1911-12. In 1906, he toured India and
Ceylon. On these expeditions, he sketched and made field notes
as a basis for his art, which he later executed in his studio
in Berlin.
