K. L. Hartig's aurochs painting

There is an aurochs painting from 1955 that is worth noticing. It's the painting by the German artist K. L. Hartig, which can be seen here. It was done for a publication by the zoologist Hans von Lengerken in the same year. The original was coloured and is untraceable today, unfortunately. What is special about this painting is its accuracy. Hartig took measurements from a nearly complete skeleton and a skull from the collection of the natural history museum of Berlin, so the painting can arguably be called a reconstruction. The only aspects to criticize are that the shoulder hump is to low and the snout too short, perhaps also the head too small, but otherwise it is pretty accurate. The fact that the hump is too low was recognized in the literature as early as in 1957. While most historic aurochs reconstructions were rather imprecise or incorrect, with Hartig's painting there is at least one that gave an accurate impression of the aurochs' life appearance already back in the 1950s. 

The painting inspired me to do my own version of it. I based it on the Sassenberg bull skeleton, which I used quite often for my reconstructions. It is a large-horned Holocene specimen, but there were also Holocene aurochs bulls with comparably small horns such as the Himmelev specimen. 

Here is the result: 

Literature 

Walter Frisch: Der Auerochs - das europäische Rind. 2010.