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Lot Essay
David Shepherd is one of the world's leading contemporary wildlife artists, as well as being a passionate conservationist. He has painted in Africa since 1960 when he was commissioned by the Royal Air Force to execute his first wildlife painting.
The present work was painted in 1966 and is thought to depict, a well-known African Bull Elephant at Amboseli National Park that was given the nick-name, Oginga Odinga, after the Vice-President of Kenya at that time. It is also thought that the hole in the elephant's right ear was the result of a poacher's bullet.
Shepherd wrote recently of his memories of Amboseli:
'Amboseli must surely be one of the most famous tourist areas in the whole of East Africa. I first went there in 1949 with one of the local game wardens long before I even thought of specialising in painting wildlife. Tuffy Marshall, the warden drove me down in his battered old Landrover, when Amboseli was very different from what it is today. Now it is a major tourist attraction, with all the attendant lodges and infrastructure which modern tourism demands. In those days, we slept under the stars, waking in the morning to find the footprints in the dust left by a pride of lions, extremely near to where we had slept.
It was during that visit to Amboseli that I saw my beloved elephants in the wild for the first time, a memory that I shall treasure for ever. I was on foot with Tuffy, and we were watching two hundred elephants just playing around against the majestic backdrop of the snow-capped peak of Africa's highest mountain. Mount Kilimanjaro is an unforgettable feature of this marvellous place. It was then that I realised how insignificant man is when unarmed, facing elephants without the protection of a vehicle" (see the catalogue, Wildlife of the World, An exhibition of recent paintings by David Shepherd, OBE, FRSA, Richard Green Galleries, London, 1999, no. 20).
The present work was painted in 1966 and is thought to depict, a well-known African Bull Elephant at Amboseli National Park that was given the nick-name, Oginga Odinga, after the Vice-President of Kenya at that time. It is also thought that the hole in the elephant's right ear was the result of a poacher's bullet.
Shepherd wrote recently of his memories of Amboseli:
'Amboseli must surely be one of the most famous tourist areas in the whole of East Africa. I first went there in 1949 with one of the local game wardens long before I even thought of specialising in painting wildlife. Tuffy Marshall, the warden drove me down in his battered old Landrover, when Amboseli was very different from what it is today. Now it is a major tourist attraction, with all the attendant lodges and infrastructure which modern tourism demands. In those days, we slept under the stars, waking in the morning to find the footprints in the dust left by a pride of lions, extremely near to where we had slept.
It was during that visit to Amboseli that I saw my beloved elephants in the wild for the first time, a memory that I shall treasure for ever. I was on foot with Tuffy, and we were watching two hundred elephants just playing around against the majestic backdrop of the snow-capped peak of Africa's highest mountain. Mount Kilimanjaro is an unforgettable feature of this marvellous place. It was then that I realised how insignificant man is when unarmed, facing elephants without the protection of a vehicle" (see the catalogue, Wildlife of the World, An exhibition of recent paintings by David Shepherd, OBE, FRSA, Richard Green Galleries, London, 1999, no. 20).