Growing up in Illinois, David Hagerbaumer began duck hunting, trapping, and fishing at the age of eight in order to help support his family. After serving in the Marines in World War II, he returned home and began working as a taxidermist in a decoy factory. He then attended San Diego State College majoring in art but never graduated. Hagerbaumer worked as preparator in the Nevada State Museum and then became a staff artist at the Santa Barbara Museum in 1957. He painted at night and sold his work at shows each weekend. It was at this point that he switched from oils to watercolor because he needed a medium that would dry faster. Soon, he realized that he could make a living selling his paintings, and he dedicated himself to his art full-time. Ralph Terrill from The Crossroads of Sports recognized Hagerbaumer's talent and promoted his work through the company catalog and gallery, and the artist's work gained national recognition.

Hagerbaumer's artwork focuses almost exclusively on game birds. He is more concerned about the accuracy of the bird form in flight than the texture of their feathers and makes studies from motion pictures of bird flight patterns. Seeing art as a business rather than an emotional act, Hagerbaumer paints very quickly and efficiently. Also, he tends to use the muted colors of winter rather than bright spring or summer hues. He was greatly influenced by Ray M. Mason who taught him the masking technique and how to use a hairdryer for contrast effects. Subsequently, Hagerbaumer has greatly influenced and encouraged contemporary wildlife artists, such as David Maass, and his work has been published in two books, Selected American Game Birds and The Bottoms. Although he no longer produces many works, he continues to carve duck decoys and accepts the occasional painting commission.

(Source: Greenhagen, Liz. "Hagenbaumer: The Practical and Humble Artist," Wildlife Art News (November/December 1896): 65-71).

Eli Harvey was born in Ogden, Ohio on September 23, 1860 and died in Alhambra, California on February 10, 1957. He studied at the Art Institute of Cincinnati in Ohio and the Academies Julian and Delecluse in Paris, France. Harvey lived and worked in New York City until he moved to Alhambra, California in the late 1920s. Some of his best-known works is the lion sculptures at the Bronx Zoo, The Elk bronze for the Order of Elks and the bear mascot for Brown University. Works of art by Harvey at the National Museum of Wildlife Art are: Bull Elk, REX; A Lion and his Prey, American Bison, and Lion and Pigeon. (Excerpt from Eli Harvey: Quaker Sculptor from Ohio, pg. 40) "During my years in Paris I made just one carving, a lion and pigeon, from a piece of the finest Carrara marble I could obtain. The idea for this composition came from an incident I saw while modeling my study for the Abyssinian lion at the private Menagerie Pazan. One day the keeper brought a live pigeon for the lion saying 'It is good for him to have living game sometimes.' The lion was on his feet walking when the pigeon was poked through the bars. The pigeon flew upward and the lion made a quick pass at him with his paw but missed. The frightened pigeon flew back and forth, but after a few attempts the lion brought the pigeon to the floor. Then, lying recumbent on his stomach, the lion held the pigeon down with an outstretched paw on each wing. The lion sniffed at the bird but raised his head in apparent disgust at the odor of the feathers. He drew back his head, arched his neck and with ears pricked forward looked at the bird. The pigeon was on his back with his tail toward the lion, so he could raise his head and watch the lion. Though fraught with impeding tragedy for the pigeon, nevertheless the attitude of the lion was so natural and the pose so proud that I felt it was worthy to be carved in marble."

William Jacob Hays spent most of his life in New York City but occasionally ventured to the Adirondack Mountains of New York, Nova Scotia, and England on search for subjects to paint. He studied art with John Ruebens Smith, an important topographer and lithographer, and exhibited at the American Art Union in 1848. His most inspirational and productive trip was a five-month journey up the Missouri River through the Great Plains, the Dakotas, and Montana to the Yellowstone River during the summer of 1860. After this expedition, Hays returned to his studio in New York City to transform his field sketches into an artistic and authentic documentation of the American West prior to the arrival of white settlers. Among his favorite subjects was the North American Bison. An accomplished naturalist and experienced observer, Hays portrayed wildlife and habitat of the American West accurately and with exquisite detail.

Hays' work is recognized in many private collections and museums, including the Denver Art Museum, the Brooklyn Art Museum, the Gilcrease Museum, the Buffalo Bill Historical Society, and the National Museum of Wildlife Art.

Hennings spent his childhood in Chicago and often visited and later attended the Art Institute of Chicago. After graduating in 1904, Hennings worked as a commercial artist, muralist, and book illustrator. In 1912 he traveled to Europe and studied under Franz Von Stuck and Angelo Junk at the Royal Academy in Munich, Germany. Hennings returned to Chicago in 1914 and resumed commercial work until former mayor of Chicago Carter H. Harrison, Jr., offered to buy one of his paintings under the condition that Hennings traveled to Taos, New Mexico, and become acquainted with the local art community. Harrison instigated similar deals with Hennings' friends William Ufer and Victor Higgins. Arriving in Taos in 1917, the landscapes, Native Americans, and wildlife of Taos immediately inspired Hennings. He permanently settled there in 1921, the same year he became the youngest and penultimate member of the Taos Society of Artists. Hennings worked on many commissions, including paintings of the Navajo Indians in the Rio Grande area for the Santa Fe Railroad.

In the National Museum of Wildlife Art's Deer Among the Aspens, three deer, seen through the trees, are alerted by the viewer's presence. The trees create a distinct pattern, which divides the canvas, thus emphasizing its two-dimensionality. Hennings' paintings are technically sophisticated and demonstrate a linear and decorative style influenced by Art Nouveau and Japanese wood block prints. His vibrant colors were directly inspired by the bright, natural light of Taos.

Hennings won many awards, including a Gold Medal from the Palette and Chisel Club, the Isidor Gold Medal and the Ranger Purchase Award from the National Academy of Design, the Englewood Women's Club Prize from the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Walter Lippincott Prize from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. His work is recognized in many private collections and museums, including the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the Gilcrease Institute, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the National Museum of Wildlife Art.

Born in the German free state of Bremen, Herman Herzog entered Dusseldorf Academy in 1849. He was a pupil of J.W. Schirmer, Lessing, A. Achenbach, and H. Gude. His early paintings depict favorite mountain landscapes viewed during his travels to Norway, Switzerland, Italy, and the Pyrenees. His patrons included Queen Victoria and the Grand Duke Alexander of Russia.

In 1869, Herzog emigrated to Philadelphia and continued to paint landscapes in Pennsylvania and along the Hudson River. On a trip west in 1874-75, he created mountain sketches in Yosemite and Sierra Nevada. His painting El Capitan, Yosemite was considered a masterpiece.

Edward Hicks is recognized as one of America's most significant early "folk art" painters. A devout Quaker for much of his life, his native and stylized compositions resulted from his dedication to his faith. When Hicks was born in the small Bucks County, Pennsylvania, village then called Four Lanes End (later Attleborough, and now Langhorne) in the spring of 1780, the American Revolutionary War was about to tear his family apart. His grandfather, Gilbert Hicks, had held the royalist position of prothonotary of Bucks County, and had already fled northward (eventually to Nova Scotia) at the outbreak of the war. Edward's father Isaac would soon also flee, to New York City, due to a royal appointment in local government that he felt threatened his safety. While Isaac was in New York, however, Catherine "Kitty" Hicks, mother of Edward and his two older siblings, died. Following his wife's death, Isaac returned to Bucks County in 1783 to be with his children, but was certainly not welcome to regain any role in government there, as he was hoping to do. Under these unfortunate circumstances, the elder Hicks placed each of his three children in a different foster home in the Newtown area; the three-year-old Edward was taken by family friends Elizabeth and David Twining, who were Quakers. Hicks later joined the Quaker faith, and his affiliation profoundly affected his life and work. Around the time Hicks turned thirteen, his father believed it was time for him to leave the Twining house and begin an apprenticeship. Henry and William Tomlinson took him on to work in their coach-building shop in Four Lanes End, and he stayed there until he was twenty years old in April of 1800. Hicks left his apprenticeship skilled in the use of paint and varnish, but not physically strong enough to be a wheelwright. Consequently, he spent the next few months working mainly as a house painter, and by 1801, Hicks had gone into business for himself as a painter of everything from signs and coaches to clock faces and milk buckets. He was earning money at a steady rate during this period, but his strong desire to become a Quaker and get married within the Quaker faith soon caused him to give up his employment. Painting was considered to represent vanity and frivolity among Quakers at the time, and Hicks did not want to appear unworthy to the family of the young Quaker woman, Sarah Worstall, whom he was courting. When Hicks married Worstall in November 1803, he was almost penniless. He borrowed money the next year to build a small house for his wife and newborn daughter in the town of Milford (now Hulmeville), falling into debt that would plague him for most of his life. By 1812 Hicks had become a Quaker minister in his home meeting (congregation), called Middletown Meeting, near Attleborough, and was soon preaching throughout Eastern Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New Jersey. Friends helped him keep his debt at a relatively manageable level for a time because they felt his chosen, but unpaid, career was valuable to the community, and Hicks had no other respectable means to support his family. Hicks briefly tried his hand at farming on his father's land, but he lost money on the venture. Finally some of the Friends in his meeting approached him about resuming his painting; as long as he pursued his work "within the bounds of innocence and usefulness," the concerned worshipers did not feel there was anything wrong with Hicks employing himself this way in order to provide for his family. Rather reluctantly, Hicks returned to painting signs and domestic items shortly after this time. Following an extended preaching tour through New York State and into Canada in 1820, Hicks again returned home to his family, his meeting and his painting. At this point, he also took a paying position ($20 a year) as the custodian of the Newtown Meetinghouse. By the period of 1823-25, Hicks discovered that painting imagery related to messages he was often preaching proved pious, yet undeniably lucrative. Copying from an engraving of a drawing by British artist Richard Westall that appeared in many American Bibles, Hicks began depicting the interpretation of Isaiah 11:6 in oil on panel complete with the words to the prophecy lettered around the picture's edges. Calling his renditions The Peaceable Kingdom of the Branch, Hicks also looked to other contemporary sources for inspiration on features to include in these compositions. Unlike Westall's image, Hicks patriotically related his Peaceable Kingdoms to the still-young America by setting scenes of William Penna's treaty with the Native Americans and the Natural Bridge in Virginia in the backgrounds of his paintings. Hicks painted scores of Peaceable Kingdom panels and canvases until his death in 1849, and intermittently painted other religious, patriotic, and agrarian images throughout the later years of his career. As time progressed, the Peaceable Kingdom paintings became less naturalistic on the whole, with many of the familiar creatures in the foreground becoming more and more stylized.

Thomas Hill is famous for his portrayals of American mountain scenery. In 1853, he studied portraiture and still life painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. During the summer of 1854, Hill visited the White Mountains in New Hampshire, where he met and painted with several artists associated with the Hudson River School, a group of nineteenth-century American painters known for their romantic depictions of the American landscape. He traveled to Paris in 1866 and 1867 to continue his still life painting studies, but his instructors encouraged him to develop his exceptional talent for landscape painting.

Returning to the United States in 1867, Hill became a leading member of the Hudson River School. He was an avid painter of mountain landscapes, from the Sierra Nevada and the Rocky Mountains, to the White Mountains of New Hampshire. His landscapes reflect a deep understanding of nature through his precise, accurate, and rapidly executed compositions. In 1870, Hill settled in California, spending the winters in San Francisco and the summers in Yosemite Valley. Hill is often referred to as the “Artist of Yosemite." He was extremely active in the local art community and assisted with the development of the California School of Design. Hill later moved his studio from San Francisco to Yosemite National Park. His most celebrated painting, The Driving of the Last Spike (1881), is a large image commemorating the completion of the Central-Pacific Railroad at Ogden, Utah, in 1869.

Thomas Hewes Hinckley was born in Milton, Massachusetts in 1813. He was apprenticed to a Philadelphia merchant at fifteen years of age and attended evening art classes in that city instructed by William Mason. Hinckley returned to Milton in 1833 upon the death of his father, Captain Robert Hinckley, and he set up a studio as a portrait and sign painter there, later concentrating on animal paintings. Hinckley stayed for a brief time on Naushon Island, just off the Atlantic Coast, to investigate the deer that lived there. Following his visit, Hinckley continued his studies in the Adirondacks and Moosehead Lake. In 1851, Hinckley traveled to Europe to research the works of Sir Edwin H. Landseer, as well as those of other English and Flemish masters. In 1870, he made a trip to California to study elk. In addition to animal paintings, Hinckley also created landscape images; he believed that nature was the best instructor and source of knowledge. He died in his hometown in 1896 at the age of 83.

As a boy, Frank Hoffman spent the majority of his time around his father's stables riding and sketching the horses. His first art job was as an illustrator for the Chicago American newspaper. He also took classes from J. Wellington Reynolds while in Chicago. Throughout his life, Hoffman illustrated for magazines, such as The Saturday Evening Post, Cosmopolitan, and McCall's. He also worked on national advertising campaigns for companies, such as General Motors, General Electric, and others. In 1916, he traveled through Montana, working as a public relations director at Glacier National Park and later moved to Taos, New Mexico. He spent time with cowboys and Indians during his travels, living briefly with the Blackfeet and learning their language. He settled on a working ranch in Taos, using his own horses, longhorns, dogs, eagles, and burros as models for his illustrations and paintings.

Although Hoffman is known primarily as an illustrator and painter, he also sculpted prior to 1940. From 1940 to 1953, Hoffman worked exclusively for Brown & Bigelow, the premier calendar company in the United States and produced over 150 western paintings for them, which effectively ended his sculpture career. Although creating images for calendars did not pay as well as illustration work, Hoffman had much greater freedom in terms of subject matter as Brown & Bigelow allowed him to paint what he wished. Most of his original paintings remain in the private collection of the calendar company. The artist's eyesight became so poor in 1953 that he could no longer produce art, and for the last five years of his life, Hoffman concentrated on racing his thoroughbred horses.

Allan Houser grew up on a government farm near Apache, Oklahoma. He was greatly influenced by his parents, who spoke in their native tongue, sang and chanted traditional music, and recalled memories of Native American wars and struggles. In 1934, Houser studied under Dorothy Dunn at the Painting Studio of the Santa Fe Indian School, and two years later, he exhibited paintings at the World's Fair in New York. In 1939, Houser and Navajo painter Gerald Nailor were commissioned to paint a mural in the Department of the Interior Building in Washington, D.C. Houser studied with Olle Nordmark, a Norwegian muralist at the Fort Sill Indian School in Oklahoma. With Nordmark's encouragement, he began to explore sculpture, working with small wood carvings. Through the 1940s, he worked in construction as a pipe fitter's assistant, while sculpting and painting at night. He taught at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe and later became head of the sculpture department. In 1968, he cast his first bronze works, and in 1975, retired from teaching to concentrate on sculpture.

Houser's bronze, stone, and steel figures depict Apache mothers and children, Navajo shepherds, Plains chieftains, and other tribal subjects. The men and women are depicted in traditional roles. The female characters act as mothers to children and earth alike, gathering food and carrying water. The male figures hunt, ride, fight, chant, and play music. Isolated from external environments, Houser's figures are graceful and direct. Houser says, "I work not just for myself, but to honor the American Indian. I hope to draw attention to centuries-old values, especially concepts of living in harmony with nature that can benefit all people." The National Museum of Wildlife Art's elegant Lament conveys strong emotion and attitude. Holding a buffalo skull, the figure dramatizes the emotional and catastrophic impact of the bison's demise on the Plains Indians cultures.

Houser completed many commissions including, Comrade in Mourning, a memorial sculpture honoring the Native Americans who died in WWII. He also designed the 59th medal for the American Society of Medalists. Houser received many honors and awards, including the Guggenheim Fellowship for Painting and Sculpture, the Palmes Academique from the French Government, the Waite Phillips Trophy from the Philbrook Art Center in Oklahoma, a Gold Medal from the Heard Museum in Phoenix, three Governor's Awards for the Visual Arts in New Mexico, the American Indian Distinguished Achievement Award from the American Indian Resources Institute in Washington, D.C., and the National Medal of Arts presented by President Bush in 1992. Houser's work is recognized in many museums and private collections, including the National Museum of American Art, the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., the Denver Art Museum, the Gilrease Museum, the Philbrook Art Center, the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian in Santa Fe, and the National Museum of Wildlife Art.

Nancy Howe was born in New Jersey in 1950. She inherited a love of the outdoors from her father, an active outdoorsman. An avid skier, she remained in the Northeast, settling on a small sheep farm in Vermont. Howe holds a degree in studio art from Middlebury College, and began developing her art seriously in 1988 from her rural studio, also in Vermont. She holds the distinction of being the only female artist to have ever won the Federal Duck Stamp contest.

Her oil paintings are often quite subtle, with a soft, refined quality of realism that emphasizes light and design. They span a range of subject matter from animals and birds to landscapes, still life, and figures. She has been a member of the Society of Animal Artists since 1992, a signature member of the American Academy of Women Artists since 1998, and associate member of the Oil Painters of America since 2002. Her paintings have become part of several museum permanent collections and received numerous awards from the Society of Animal Artists, the National Arts for the Parks Competition, and the American Academy of Women Artists (including best in show honors in the 1999 and 2001 annual exhibition). In 2003, Howe was the recipient of the grand prize, the American National Award of Excellence, from the twelfth annual exhibition of the Oil Painters of America.

In 1972, Donna Howell-Sickles received a postcard that would change her life. On the front of the postcard was a cowgirl, with bright red smiling lips, waving at the viewer. Howell- Sickles became fascinated by the smiling woman and, by 1979, the cowgirl had become the central theme of her art.

Initially Howell-sickles viewed the image of the cowgirl as a fictional character from America's old west, because of this her early pictures feature faceless women. By 1980 she had spent a considerable amount of time researching and meeting real cowgirls, causing her to eliminate the anonymous cowgirl, replacing her with defined individuals. Around this same time, Howell-Sickles began to consider the notion of the American west and what it stood for in its early years. She described it as "the quest for self, for meaning, for happiness, and camaraderie."

1984 brought about another change in Howell-Sickles' work as she began to study and incorporate Greek, Egyptian, and Native American mythology into her work. From these traditions as well as other religions she began to include elements in groups of three, as the number three represents everything from the trinity to the three phases of the moon, and alludes to the notion of the goddess, as well it is the number of completion; representing beginning, middle, and end. Aside from the appearance of groups of three in her paintings, Howell-Sickles consistently incorporates other themes and symbols in her work. The color red is always present in her work as it symbolizes life and energy to the artist. Animals often stand for an obstacle overcome and inner strength.

Howell-Sickles describes the cowgirl as, "an accomplished and gutsy rider balanced on potential danger. On another level, she's every woman constantly readjusting the balance of her own circumstances. As an archetype, she is a blend of past memories, present joys and future dreams." She embodies self-reliance and independence, she is carefree, and confident and meets any difficulties with optimism and laughter. Through these colorful, smiling women, Howell-Sickles has created heroines out of common women.

Howell-Sickles creates large scale, mixed-media canvases. Her primary materials consist of charcoal, oil and pastels, and she commonly leaves her under-drawing visible. Because of her talent and dedication to portraying strong and jubilant women, Howell-Sickles was the featured artist of the 1996 exhibition, American Women Artists: A New Legacy, displayed at The National Museum of Wildlife Art.

Of Native American descent, Doug Hyde creates life-size sculptures of human and animal figures in stone and bronze. The artist is of Nez Perce, Assiniboine, and Chippewa ancestry, but he creates figures from many tribes and locations after doing extensive research concerning his subjects. Animals make up a large part of his oeuvre as imagery from the stories he heard as a child from his grandfather. Much of his work is commissioned by city governments and organizations in order to commemorate an event or people. While his work is realistic and authentically detailed, some of his sculptures are somewhat stylized as well.

After growing up in Oregon and Idaho, Hyde attended the San Francisco Art Institute and the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he studied under and became friends with Allan Houser. He served two tours in Vietnam and was seriously injured. While recovering, Hyde worked as a carver of tombstones and sculpted his own art at night. After his first show in 1972 at the Northern Plains Indian Museum in Montana where his work completely sold out, he moved to Santa Fe and took over Houser's teaching position. In 1974, Hyde dedicated himself full-time to studio work and has been creating stone and bronze sculptures ever since.

His work can be found in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian, Eiteljorg Museum, Gilcrease Museum, Amon Carter Museum, and the National Museum of Wildlife Art. He has also been presented with awards from the White House, Kennedy Center, Heard Museum, Artists of America, and the Prix de West Invitational Exhibition at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum.

"With commissions, I listen to what the people have to say, whether it's a tribe from Hawaii or California or the Southwest, or anywhere. I absorb it, I get a picture of it, I try to get a flavor of it. . . . I do as much research as I can. Then I try to re-create that world in three-dimensional form."

(Source Material: Gauntleroy, Gussie. "Rock Solid," Southwest Art (March 2004): 135-138.)

After growing up in Ohio, John Dare Howland left home at the age of fourteen to travel west. He joined the American Fur Company and traded with Sioux Indians along the Missouri and Platte Rivers. In 1858, Howland traveled to the Pikes Peak area in search of gold but was not successful in striking it rich. He joined the Colorado Volunteers at the start of the Civil War and also served in the Indian Wars as Captain of the Scouts. After his military service, he decided to study art seriously and traveled to Paris, spending two years studying under Armand Dumaresq among others. He returned to the United States to serve as Secretary to the Indian Peace Commission from 1867 to 1869 negotiating treaties between the government and the Plains Indians tribes. During this time, Howland also worked on assignments from eastern publishers, and his artwork appeared in publications such as Harper's Weekly and Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper. After another study abroad experience, Howland eventually settled in Denver and founded the Denver Art Club in 1886. He became a civic leader and spent more time painting in his later years.

Howland is known as a painter of fauna with a specialty in depicting bison, which he would have seen during his time with the American Fur Company. He is one of the few artists who recorded images of the West before the railroad era. While he lived in Denver, Howland traveled to nearby states to paint and is also credited with designing the Civil War monument at the Colorado State Capitol.

Grace Hudson was born, lived most of her life and died near Ukiah, California. The daughter of a newspaperman and photographer, she became interested in Native Americans as a young girl. Her family was among the only white settlers in this valley so she early developed a concern and sympathy for the local impoverished Pomo Indians.

At age 14, Hudson began studying at the School of Design with Virgil Williams and at the San Francisco Art Institute with Raymond Yelland. From Williams she learned classical techniques of drawing and modeling from plaster casts. The landscape class with Yelland was distinctive because it was at the only art school in the country where pupils went into the outdoors directly to paint with their teachers.

In 1890, Grace married John Hudson, a doctor who gave up his medical career to work as an ethnologist of the Pomo Indians. Her husband's career change was to have a profound influence on Hudson's own art career. In 1893, Hudson exhibited a painting of a crying Indian baby called "Little Mendocino" at the World Columbian Exposition. The work won enormous critical acclaim and convinced the artist to focus all her efforts on painting the Pomoan Indians.

Hudson gained fame for specializing in painting Native Americans, in particular children and was a frequent contributing artist and illustrator for Sunset, Cosmopolitan, and Western Field. Despite her success in some circles, in her own time, Hudson's art was criticized for its subject matter, considered by some as "unworthy." The great irony is that it is now considered by some as "too sentimental." The Pomo Indians who lived in the area, and who she painted so skillfully, did befriend her and called her "Painter Lady."

In the NMWA painting Boy with Fox, Hudson depicts the poignant relationship between the Pomoan culture and surrounding nature, which Hudson pursued throughout her career.

As a teenager, Richard Morris Hunt left the United States and traveled to Paris, where he spent twelve years. In 1846, he began his formal education at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, the first American to be accepted at the prestigious school. His training focused on the architectural design of public buildings, but he also studied sculpture, painting, and drawing. After returning to New York in 1857, Hunt was instrumental in establishing professional standards for architects and helped found the American Institute of Architects. He also formed a studio and trained many students that went on to become preeminent architects, such as William Ware. He continued to travel to Europe throughout his life for artistic inspiration and expounded on the numerous historical European architectural styles for American buildings.

As the foremost architect of the late nineteenth century, Hunt designed private homes and summer houses, monuments and memorials, and commercial structures and public buildings. He had connections with the wealthiest families in the United States planning buildings for the Vanderbuilts, Marquands, and others. Some of his most noted public commissions include the Tribune Building (one of the first buildings with an elevator), the Yorktown Memorial, the base of the Statue of Liberty, the facade of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Administration Building at the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893. Hunt incorporated painting, sculpture, and architecture within his elaborate structures and worked closely with artists John LaFarge, Karl Bitter, and Augustus Saint-Gaudens.

The daughter of a professor of paleontology at Harvard University, Anna Hyatt Huntington grew up surrounded by a range of animal life encompassing the entire zoological scale. She studied with sculptors Henry Hudson Kittleson in Boston and Hermon Atkins MacNeil at the Art Students League. She also worked for sculptor Gutzon Borglum. Huntington made frequent trips to the Bronx Zoo where she modeled animals and was especially intrigued by the large cats. Though she created sculptures of other animals in the course of her career, feline subjects appear to have given her the most satisfaction. In conjunction with her husband, Huntington opened America's first public outdoor sculpture garden on their private estate, now called Brookgreen Gardens. In 1940, they opened Stanerigg Farm in Connecticut, raising deer and birds.

Yawning Panther demonstrates the realism of Huntington's art in pose, detail, and style. Rather than showing her subject stalking a prey, she has caught the panther in an intimate moment as it stretches in a wide-mouthed yawn with its front legs tautly extended and its tail elegantly arched. Her skill in the lost-wax method of casting bronze is evident in the texture and wrinkles of the animal's fur. Although the scale of the work is small, the work conveys great strength and graceful movement.

Huntington received numerous awards, including the Chevalier Legion of Honor, the Purple Rosette from the French government, the Shaw Prize and the Watrous Gold Medal from the National Academy of Design, and gold medals from the Pennsylvania Academy and the Allied Artists of America. She was a member of the Associate National Academy, the National Academy of Design, the National Sculpture Society, the American Federation of Arts, National Institute of Arts and Letters, and the National Association of Women Artists. Huntington's work is recognized in many private collections and museums, including the New Britain Museum of American Art, the Denver Art Museum, the Museum of New Mexico, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brookgreen Gardens, and the National Museum of Wildlife Art.