ARTIST: Chuck Ripper (West Virginia, Pennsylvania, 1929 - 2019)
NAME: Brown Pelican
YEAR: 1996
MEDIUM: gouache on board
CONDITION: Excellent.
SIGHT SIZE: 14 x 12 inches / 35 x 30 cm
BOARD SIZE: 18 x 15 inches / 45 x 38 cm
SIGNATURE: lower right
NOTE: This painting is the original painting which was published on the Fleetwood First Day Cover for the U.S. 20c Brown Pelican stamp issued October 2, 1996.
PROVENANCE: Collection of James A. Helzer (1946-2008), Founder of Unicover Corporation.
CATEGORY: antique vintage painting
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SKU#: 118700
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BIOGRAPHY:
Ripper, one of the best-known wildlife artists in the country, had painted and illustrated just about everything that walks, swims, flies or crawls, and some things that stay put.
Painter Chuck Ripper was born in Pittsburgh on October 28, 1929. His father was a blacksmith and an amateur landscape painter, who spent hours in the woods with his son. His mother was an elementary art teacher. Both encouraged Chuck's interest in nature and art. While Ripper was a student at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, he had his first bird painting published in Nature magazine.
In 1953, Ripper moved to Huntington to become art director for the Standard Printing and Publishing Company. He quit in 1964 to become a full-time freelance artist, while continuing to live in Huntington.
He has created nearly 1,500 illustrations for a book in Peterson's Field Guide series, illustrated books for the National Audubon Society and the National Geographic Society, and designed more than 550 conservation stamps for the National Wildlife Federation.
Ripper's works have been displayed at the Norman Rockwell Museum of Illustration in Stockbridge, Massachusetts; the Explorers Hall at the National Geographic Society; the Denver Museum of Art; the Culture Center in Charleston; and the Huntington Museum of Art. Chuck Ripper is regarded as one of the country's best-known wildlife artists.