In the winter of 1925, while still enrolled at the Art Students League in New York, Calder made hundreds of sketches of animals during trips to the Bronx and Central Park zoos. Through fluid brushwork and an economy of line, Calder conveyed a sense of these creatures springing to life. The following year, 141 of them were published in his manual Animal Sketching: “There is always a feeling of perpetual motion about animals and to draw them successfully this must be borne in mind.”
