Tigers of Wrath: Watercolors by Walton Ford

New York–born artist Walton Ford, a 1982 graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, draws inspiration from the work of such nineteenth-century artists as the naturalist John James Audubon and the French caricaturist J.J. Grandville, whose part-human, part-animal subjects satirize man’s shortcomings. This exhibition presents more than fifty of Ford’s large-scale, meticulously executed watercolors from the 1990s to the present, which depict birds and animals in a style resembling Audubon’s prodigious Birds of America—but with a significant twist. While beautiful, Ford’s paintings often portray scenes of violence and offer a wry critique of colonialism, the naturalist tradition, and the relationship between man and animal.

Tigers of Wrath: Watercolors by Walton Ford is organized for the Brooklyn Museum by Marilyn Kushner, Curator of Prints and Drawings.