who has any grudge or ill-will against the bear, wolves and panthers.”
-advertisement, American Field, March 1821
Shortly, I will be travelling to three known locations in North America where circle hunts were held during the mid 1700’s through to the mid 1800’s: Hinckley, Ohio; Richfield, Pennsylvania and Beech Creek, Pennsylvania. At these locations, I will sketch the current landscape following William Gilpin’s guidelines set out in his book, originally published in 1792, Three Essays: On Picturesque Beauty; On Picturesque Travel; and On Sketching Landscape.
While Gilpin was writing his tracts on the “picturesque” and promoting the gentile occupation of sketching the rural landscapes of England; on this side of the the Atlantic, Euro-American colonists were coming to terms with the hostilities of their environment through a strange and brutal ritual called a “circle hunt.” An account of the Great Pennsylvania Circle Hunt of 1760 describes the gathering of 200 armed men who, forming a circle of 30 miles in diameter, marched towards the center of this circle slaughtering every creature within its borders. Although many animals managed to break free of the encroaching circle of men, the final count of the day’s carnage included 41 panthers, 109 wolves, 112 foxes, 114 mountain cats, 17 black bears, 1 white bear, 2 elk, 198 deer, 111 buffaloes, 3 fishers, 1 otter, 12 gluttons, 3 beavers and “upwards of 500 smaller animals.”
I will be sketching the landscapes where these hunts occurred using Gilpin’s guidelines for sketching the “picturesque” which he defined as the qualities that make a particular landscape suited to be drawn or painted. With several dozen landscape sketches complete, I will return to my studio. Referring to historical records of the numbers and kinds of animals killed during these hunts, I will draw the animals back into the landscapes, allowing them to posthumously re-inhabit their environment. Through this process, I will endeavor to create a ritualistic reversal, a futile restoration, an archive and an epitaph, while at the same time illustrating the complexities and absurdities inherent in the relationship between civilization and wildlife.
The brutality of the circle hunt, which in its time was considered a social, sporting event with a practical outcome, stands in sharp contrast not only to concurrent ideas of the “picturesque” but also to present day efforts in North America towards wildlife conservation. I am interested in this historical period as it marks the beginning of a significant shift, indeed a rift, in the relationship between man and nature which, in turn, is reflected in visual representations of animals. This theme is explored by John Berger in his essay “Why Look at Animals?” wherein he writes “the image of a wild animal becomes the starting-point of a daydream: a point from which the daydreamer departs with his back turned.” With this work, I want to indulge these daydreams while simultaneously addressing the realities of our fraught history with animals.
I would like to thank the Canada Council for their generous support of this project.
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