Albany's Historic Whaling Station > Records

PAINTING -NORTHERN FUR SEAL

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Richard Ellis

c. 1975

Subcollections

Overview

Painting of Seal Family- Large male with dense brown fur, sleeker lighter brown female and dark grey pup, all long flippered, gouache on blue card, framed and mounted with inscription (83).

Historical information

Collection of 106 of paintings by Richard Ellis that were selected by the Smithsonian Institution to form a traveling exhibit of the marine mammals of the world. The collection was purchased by Perth businessman Kevin Parry in 1985 and donated to Whale World, now known as Albany's Historic Whaling Station.

Details

Registration number

cwa-org-128-RE1999.371

Item type

Themes

Material

Width

410 mm

Height or length

440 mm

Depth

15 mm

Weight

1.52 kg

Inscriptions and markings

NORTHERN FUR SEAL
(Callorhinus ursinus)
Also known as the Pribilof fur seal, this animal breeds on the chain of islands that extends from Alaska to Kamchatka, Siberia, and ventures as far south as Santa Barbara, Calif., in the eastern North Pacific, and Honshu, Japan, in the west. The large males - perhaps 8 feet long and weighing 600 pounds - arrive first on the breeding grounds; the females then arrive to form into harems. Once hunted mercilessly, the northern fur seal is now "harvested: only in the Pribilofs, and under an agreement among the United States, Japan, Canada, and the USSR, some 60,000-70,000 of these seals are killed annually for their fur.
83.

Verso: Smithsonian label checklist # 83 Packing case # 5, AWHS accession number

Contextual information

The paintings represent a body of work by well-known American marine conservationist, author, artist and natural historian Richard Ellis (1938-2024).

Keywords

Richard Ellis

Albany's Historic Whaling Station

Smithsonian Institution

Marine Mammals

Place made

United States

Year

c. 1975