Elephants at a waterhole

Kuhnert trained under the animal painter Paul Meyerheim in Berlin, where he first mastered the art of rendering animal fur, hair, and muscles. Eager to personally experience and capture the exotic, he travelled extensively in Africa and the East, especially in East Africa and Ceylon, where he was decisively captivated by the wild beauty of the landscapes, ultimately devoting his career and artistic talent to the depiction of wildlife. His great ability was to capture the natural symbiosis between animals and their environment, and the nuances of pose and behaviour that could not be observed in captivity. At a time when most animal painters captured their subjects in captivity, Kuhnert’s dedication to the natural world was a radical departure from artistic convention.
In the opinion of the writer and critic J.G. Millais 'His (Kuhnert’s) lions, elephants, zebras and antelopes are so real that we feel we are gazing at them on the plains of East Africa. The landscapes are simple but intense. Sunlight is there, and the tree and grass are just those that grow in the habitat of these species. Kuhnert has, as it were, got inside the very skin of African life, and draws you insensibly within the charmed circle. To the big game hunter...the man who loves to observe in preference to the man who only shoots, his views of wild life are complete because you know he has been through the mill himself, and studies with humility'.
The present work, depicting elephants at a waterhole, enabled Kuhnert to capture on canvas the beauty of these majestic animals which were among his favourite subjects. This work was possibly exhibited in the German-Colonial Hunting Exhibition of 1903 alongside other 83 oil paintings that the artist submitted for the show in Karlsruhe.