Note Card – A ‘New Animal’ Bighorn Glory

Description

The Art

This 01/25/17 painting, a beautiful depiction of a Bighorn with Pike in pursuit, should hang in your collection. The view is from above the Arkansas River in Bighorn Sheep Canyon looking West-Southwest towards present-day Coaldale, Colorado and Hayden Pass. 

• Medium: Ink
• Surface: Card Stock
• Size:4 1/4” x 5 1/2”
• 1 card with envelope

The Artist

Ed French is a retired Disney artist, who has brought his enormous talent to depict extraordinary moments in American history, through the eyes of Zebulon Pike.

The Setting

Monday, December 29th 1806, in Pike’s journal reads, “Saw one of a new species of animal on the mountains; ascended to kill him, but did not succeed.” 

President Jefferson had instructed his explorers to record sightings of new species of plants and animals on their journeys. If possible they were capture and return with a living specimen. (Pike did bring back a grizzly bear to Jefferson.) The first American sighting of this “New Animal”, the Bighorn sheep, later became Colorado’s state mammal.