EDINBURGH Zoo is auctioning off a 100-year-old painting of a man aiming a rifle at a polar bear due to concerns that it conflicts with the zoo’s values.
It was reported yesterday that the auction would take place after Edinburgh Zoo said the artwork “does not reflect modern conservation values”.
The painting was completed by William Burn Murdoch as far back as 1913 and depicts the artist aiming his rifle at a polar bear.
It was displayed at the foot of the stairs in the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland (RZSS) mansion house in the centre of the Edinburgh Zoo.
The artwork was gifted to the RZSS by a friend of Murdoch, who was an avid big game hunter but will not go on auction at a two-day Great Western auctions event in Glasgow on 6-7 December.
It was expected to fetch a price between £6,000 and £8,000 but is overshadowed by a pair of Banksy works being sold in the same auction which were expected to fetch a price of up to £20,000 each.
Murdoch was an avid explorer and contributed to the creation of the Edinburgh Zoo, even gifting the RZSS a polar bear cub that he had captured in 1913, which he named Starboard.
His painting, titled The Last Cartridge, will be sold off after the RZSS announced that it did not wish to have a painting of trophy hunting on display.
Money raised by the auctioning of the work will be used to support the conservation work undertaken by the RZSS.
Murdoch was well-travelled, visiting both the Arctic and the Antarctic as well as India, and published several travel books and artworks based around his experiences.
He also claimed to be the first human to play bagpipes in the Antarctica, doing so on an earlier expedition to the continent.
