In the fall of 1885 he came to New York to fight the fight that all young men must face; and had the usual run of penniless starvation for a time. But he had soods to deliver. The Century Company was the first to recognize this, and commissioned him to make one thousand drawings for their Great Dictionary, and this gave him his standing as an illustrator of animal and bird life.
In 1890, he realized that Paris was the world’s center of art. Thither he went and spent four years studying painting under the French masters, Gerôme, Bouguereau, Fremier, and Mosler, exhibiting several animal pictures in the Salon. Here also he finished the elaborate studies of animal anatomy for which he is well known.
But the call of the west was ever strong, and he left Paris again for the Plains. As before he made New York his business headquarters. Nearly every year since for a month or two, he hits the high trail — saddle or canoe. From the Arctic region to Mexico, he has camped in the mountains and on the plains, seeking ever the same thing — the intimate knowledge of the wild things, that is the foundation of his remarkable wild animal stories, the first of their kind, and creators of the modern school.
Molly Cottontail, the first of these, appeared in St. Nicholas in 1889; Lobo in 1894. Then, under the stimulus of public recognition, the others followed ..text pokračuje
