The Return of the Buffalo Herd
Edward Julius Detmold (1883 - 1957)
Category
Art / Oil paintings
Date
1901
Materials
Watercolour, graphite, pen and ink, and gum Arabic on paper laid on canvas
Measurements
51 x 81 cm
Order this imageCollection
Bateman's, East Sussex
NT 761881
Summary
The painting depicts a post-climactic scene of the Jungle Book, where its protagonist Mowgli returns a herd of buffalo back to the village after using them to trigger a stampede that crushes his foe, the murderous tiger - Shere Khan. As Kipling writes at this action-packed moment : ‘The torrent of black horns, foaming muzzles, and staring eyes whirled down the ravine like boulders in flood time…The terrible charge of the buffalo-herd, against which no tiger can hope to stand.’ The painting depicts the herd returning to the village at dawn the next day with what we presume to be Rama- the great herd bull- in the foreground, his ‘long, backward-sweeping horns and savage eyes’ staring back on the plain with an almost melancholic gaze. Watercolour, graphite, pen and ink, and gum arabic on paper laid on canvas, The Return of the Buffalo Herd, by Edward Julius Detmold (1883-1957), 1901, signed with his monogram EJD in black within a green circle and dated 1901 lower left. An original illustration for Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book, by Edward Detmold. Exhibited in 1901 at the Dutch Gallery, Brook Street, London, in an ‘Exhibition of Water-Colour Drawings /Illustrations to Rudyard Kipling’s "Jungle Book", etc.’, no. 3, listed as ‘The Buffalo Charge’ by Edward Detmold. Published in 1903 by Macmillan & Co. within a volume of 'Sixteen Illustrations of Subjects from Kipling's "Jungle Book"', no. 10. In 1908 Macmillan issued the illustrations again with the full text, reduced to octavo format for their standard Kipling edition.
Provenance
By descent to Mrs Nora E.M Joy, sister of the artist, sold at Christies 'English Watercolours and Drawings' on 19 July 1977; in private collections until 2022 when purchased by the National Trust through a fund set up by the late Simon Sainsbury.
Marks and inscriptions
Bottom left: Signed in monogram 'EJD' in black within a green circle and dated 1901
Makers and roles
Edward Julius Detmold (1883 - 1957), artist