Triumph of the Wolves

In January of 1891, Ernest Thompson Seton went to Paris to study and paint at the L'Academie Julian, an art school made up of expatriate Canadian artists. While the other artists in the school concentrated on painting classical representations of landscapes and human forms, Seton chose to paint his favorite subjects, wild animals, particularly wolves. His first effort was a wolf painted from life at the Paris zoo that he titled Sleeping Wolf. The painting was accepted for inclusion in the prestigious juried show at the Grand Salon.

The next year Seton began work on a large genre or storytelling wold painting. He had read an unsubstantiated report in a Paris newspaper about a Pyrenees woodsman, known to have been successfully hunted sheep-killing wolves, who had failed to return to his cottage one evening. The next morning he was found dead, having apparently been killed by wolves.

Given his compassion for wolves, the unproven story intrigued Seton, and he set about to put it on canvas. He titled the resultant panting, Triumph of the Wolves giving it the implied moral that man cannot conquer nature or that man should respect nature, not attempt to dominate it. Later he gave it a second title, Awaited in Vain, that allowed it to be contemplated by the viewer either in sympathy for the wolves or the hunter.

Nevertheless, in spite of Seton's demonstrated technical ability in carrying out the painting, it was rejected by the jury for the 1892 Grand Salon show because of its gruesome subject matter. The painting was hung later, however, as part of the Canadian exhibit at the Chicago World's Fair in 1893.