Lot 34
Josef Franz Pallenberg(1882-1946)Square-lipped Rhinoceros with Young One, Standing 12 1/4in high
26 February 2021, 13:00 PST
Los AngelesSold for US$14,025 inc. premium
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Aaron Bastian
Director
Kathy Wong
Senior Director, Fine Art
Josef Franz Pallenberg (1882-1946)
Square-lipped Rhinoceros with Young One, Standing
inscribed 'Jos Pallenberg' (on the base)
bronze with reddish brown patina
12 1/4in high
inscribed 'Jos Pallenberg' (on the base)
bronze with reddish brown patina
12 1/4in high
Footnotes
Provenance
The Collection of Berry B. Brooks.
Literature
M. Bartelmus and S. Schweizer, Der Tierbilderhauer [The Animal Sculptor] Josef Pallenberg (1882-1946), Berlin, Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2020, no. 109, p. 175.
We wish to thank Dr. Martin Bartelmus for his kind assistance with cataloguing the lot.
Josef Pallenberg was a German animalier sculptor and animal behaviorist. He was born in Cologne and hailed a family of artists with ties to the royal Prussian court. He developed a love for animals from a young age, and spent his childhood sketching at the Cologne Zoo. He trained formally at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf where he studied drawing and sculpture. Pallenberg began publicly exhibiting his animal sculptures, which soon caught the attention of zoo directors Ludwig Heck and Carl Hagenbeck. Pallenberg created animal bronzes for the Zoologische Garten Berlin — the oldest surviving zoo in Germany — and the Hagenbeck Zoo — one of the first naturalistic, cageless zoos.
Pallenberg developed a reputation as an 'animal whisperer' from his student days. 1 Direct access to animals was important to him, and he kept a menagerie in his studio near the Cologne Zoo, including a wild boar, lioness, and wolf. Due to pressure from unhappy neighbors, he moved his studio to Düsseldorf-Lohausen and established a small private zoo in 1912.
He traveled the world to study animals and his sketchbook from around 1908 indicates that he had visited the American Museum of Natural History in New York, the Russian Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg, and the South Kensington Museum in London. 2 As 'open air' zoos grew in popularity, Pallenberg helped to implement cageless (moated) and paleontological exhibition design under Hagenbeck's aegis. In the 1930s, he consulted the Detroit and Cincinnati Zoos, and helped to transform their primate displays from 'spectacles' to naturalistic habitats. 3
The approach of World War II brought his career and patronage to an abrupt end. In October 1942, an aerial bomb hit his house and zoo. Most of his animals either died, escaped, or had to be sold due to a lack of enclosure. Though his house, studio and artistic work was destroyed, he only worried about his animals, expressing a deep loss for his 'companion species.' 4 Pallenberg suffered a rapid decline in his health, succumbing to a psychophysiological nervous disorder that he had struggled with since childhood and living his last days in a sanatorium. 5
1 M. Bartelmus and S. Schweizer, 'Zoographical Notes on Josef Pallenberg and his Animals,' Der Tierbilderhauer [The Animal Sculptor] Josef Pallenberg (1882-1946), Berlin, Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2020, p. 11.
2 Ibid, p. 15.
3 Ibid, p. 21.
4 Ibid, p. 27.
5 Ibid.
