Walton Ford
Birds and Beasts of the Studio
The Morgan Library & Museum, New York
April 12 – October 20, 2024
Study for “Ars Gratia Artis,” 2017
Watercolor, gouache, and ink over graphite
The Morgan Library & Museum, New York,
gift of the artist; 2019.196.
© 2024 Walton Ford. Photography by Janny Chiu
The Morgan Library & Museum presents Walton Ford: Birds and Beasts of the Studio. The exhibition celebrates the 2019 gift from artist Walton Ford (b. 1960) to the Morgan of sixty-three studies and sketches, shown publicly for the first time. Walton Ford is fascinated by the perception of wild animals in the human imagination, and his monumental watercolors subvert historical conventions of animal painting. This exhibition examines the artist’s working process, illuminating the role that historical, literary, cultural, and scientific research plays in his practice. Presented together with drawings of animals and birds selected by the artist from the Morgan’s holdings, this exhibition sheds new light on the museum’s collection from the perspective of a living artist.
Study for “Verfolgen”, 2018
Watercolor, gouache, and ink over graphite
The Morgan Library & Museum,
gift of the artist, 2019.213.
© 2024 Walton Ford
Birds and Beasts of the Studio opens with a selection of Walton Ford’s drawings inspired by his visits to the American Museum of Natural History, New York. To this day, he visits the museum to explore its archives, field studies, documents, and taxidermy specimens. This section of the exhibition reveals the extensive scientific research that grounds Ford’s artistic practice, which relies on attention to detail and the accuracy of animal features.
The second section presents some of Walton Ford’s studies and watercolors that imagine encounters between lions and humans, and are largely based on true stories. These works include a series centered on the Barbary lion—a now extinct subspecies which fought gladiators in ancient Rome and was used as the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) mascot. Also on view are compositional sketches from a series inspired by the escape of eight lions in Leipzig in 1913, as well as a work in which a lion devours famed Romantic painter Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863). Though humans hardly appear in Ford’s work, the interest of human culture is always evident.
Similarly, the works in the third section elaborate on the story of a black panther that escaped the Zurich Zoo and spent weeks alone in the countryside before being caught and eaten by a farmer. In dozens of paintings and drawings, Ford visualizes the panther surviving in the snowy Alps. While some pieces depict the panther from the point of view of Swiss villagers, others imagine the animal’s viewpoint, or feature dreamlike apparitions.
These sections are followed by a selection of titles from Walton Ford’s personal library, bringing focus to his literary source material. The presentation highlights the wide range of texts in Ford’s collection, from volumes of natural history and early colonial travel diaries to folktales and fables.
Eastern Gray Squirrel, 1841
Watercolor and graphite with gouache on cream paper
The Morgan Library & Museum,
purchased by Pierpont Morgan in 1910; 1976.12:2.
Photography by Steven H. Crossot.
The installation concludes with a presentation of pieces selected by Walton Ford from the Morgan’s extensive holdings, accompanied by wall texts written by the artist. Ford’s commentary highlights his expertise on artistic depictions of animals throughout the centuries, providing insights into the creative process in many of these works. The selection features some of the Morgan’s finest animal drawings executed between the seventeenth and the twentieth centuries, including work by Rembrandt van Rijn, John James Audubon, Eugène Delacroix, and Beatrix Potter.
Highlights of the exhibition include three of Walton Ford’s largescale watercolors on loan from private collections, paired with their respective studies.
Colin B. Bailey, Director of the Morgan Library & Museum, said, “It is a great pleasure to present this exhibition in collaboration with Walton Ford, celebrating the generous gift of his outstanding studies and sketches to the Morgan.Shown alongside exceptional works selected by the artist from our collection, in addition to being introduced to Walton’s working practice, visitors will also have the opportunity to encounter historic works through the perspective of a living artist.”
This exhibition is organized by Isabelle Dervaux, former Acquavella Curator and Department Head of Modern and Contemporary Drawings, and Jennifer Tonkovich, Eugene and Clare Thaw Curator of Drawings and Prints.
THE MORGAN LIBRARY & MUSEUM
225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016
