David Shepherd, Who Both Painted and Preserved Wildlife, Dies at 86
David Shepherd, a British artist whose love of painting wildlife led him to become a leading conservationist as well, died on Sept. 19 in Sussex, England. He was 86.
The cause was complications of Parkinson’s disease, an announcement by the David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation said.
Mr. Shepherd was well known for his paintings of elephants, tigers and other wild animals of Africa and Asia, which he generally rendered in a straightforward, naturalistic style that may not have been appreciated in fine-art circles but did generate plenty of sales. He also loved to paint locomotives and military scenes with aircraft and other large machinery. An early-1970s BBC documentary about him was called “The Man Who Loves Giants.”
Mr. Shepherd, though, was not content merely to document the wildlife scenes he witnessed in his frequent travels. From an early trip to Tanzania, where he saw scores of dead zebras — victims of a watering hole poisoned by poachers — he became an advocate for wildlife as well as a painter of it. In 1984, he created the foundation that bears his name.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/25/arts/david-shepherd-who-both-painted-and-preserved-wildlife-dies-at-86.html?emc=edit_tnt_20170926&nlid=73531149&tntemail0=y
RIP, good sir.
