African wildlife artist and conservationist Robert Glen’s love for Africa’s wildlife—and sculpting directly from life—led him to live most of his life in bush camps deep in the wilderness, where he could see his subjects in their natural habitats.
For the over 60 years that Glen (1940–2023) sculpted, he always saw something new, such as little movements under the surface of an elephant’s skin even though he’d seen over 2 million elephants in his lifetime.
“[In a bush camp,] I don’t think there’s any end to the excitement and material that’s there in front of you,” he said in a National Museum of Wildlife Art video.
Around 1989, Glen decided to live in a bush camp permanently after spending two years living with Somali nomads in the North Eastern Province of Kenya. He made 43 bronzes of the nomads and their camels.
He spent the last three decades living with his partner, artist Sue Stolberger, in a remote bush camp in Tanzania’s Ruaha National Park, with a trailer as his art studio and a simple tent for his home. He had to drive 155 miles to ship his molds to Italy’s Mariani Artistic Foundry, which cast his works for over 35 years.
African wildlife artist Robert Glen stands next to a bronze stallion he created for his "Mustangs of Las Colinas" sculpture, in Irving, Texas. Sept. 25 marks the 40th anniversary of the sculpture. Courtesy of The City of Irving
Award-Winning Wildlife Art
Glen’s zest for realistic animal sculptures won him many admirers and awards. In 2010, Artists for Conservation awarded Glen and Stolberger the Simon Combes Conservation Award for “artistic excellence and extraordinary contributions to the conservation cause.”
In 2019, the National Museum of Wildlife Art, in Jackson, Wyoming, awarded Glen its highest honor: the Rungius Medal, for a lifetime of “extraordinary contributions to the artistic interpretation and preservation of wildlife and its habitat.”
Glen’s bronze sculptures can be found in world-renowned museums, art galleries, and private collections, such as those of Queen Elizabeth II, the Kenyan president Jomo Kenyatta, and actor James Stewart.
Despite his vast number of African wildlife sculptures, Glen’s greatest public sculpture is the “Mustangs of Las Colinas” in Irving, Texas. The one-and-a-half times life-size bronze sculpture symbolizes the “drive, initiative, and unfettered lifestyle” of the Texan pioneers that led to the growth of the American West.
Wildlife artist Robert Glen's "Mustangs of Las Colinas," in Irving, Texas. Glen designed the water and fountains, as well as the one-and-a-half times life-size mustangs. David Lloyd/SWA
Glen forged the artistic skills he needed to make the mustangs thousands of miles away in Africa. And it all began with birds, when he was just 6 years old.
The ‘Bird Boy’ Glen
Glen was born in Nairobi, Kenya, in 1940 to Scottish parents. From an early age, he loved birds. He remembered that when he was very young, he filled his school books with bird illustrations.Glen’s father introduced him to the “bird man,” the naturalist and curator of birds, John Williams, at Nairobi’s Coryndon Museum. Williams (1913–97) had a huge impact on Glen. He taught him how to skin and prepare birds that he’d collected for the museum.
Glen filled his bedroom with wildlife drawings and paintings, and bird, snake, and small mammal specimens. “My parents were terrified to go into my room,” he said in an interview with Irving’s Independent School District (ISD). Eventually, he spent more time at the museum than in school, and that got him into trouble.
At 14 years old, Glen knew what he wanted to do: He left school and accompanied Williams on expeditions collecting bird specimens for European museum collections. For two years, he worked at collecting birds for a safari business owned by his father’s friend. On one Tanzanian safari, he spent two months collecting birds for the brother of the shah of Persia and his hunting party. After the safari, the prince invited Glen to his palace in Iran for six months to make a collection of Iranian birds for his trophy room. At the same time, Glen received a letter of acceptance to begin a three-year apprenticeship with renowned Hungarian taxidermist Coloman Jonas (1879–1969) in Denver. Glen chose the apprenticeship.
In 1959, he returned to Nairobi, where, alongside his taxidermy work, he started to sculpt animals like those of the 19th-century European “animaliers.” Animaliers realistically render animals in any art genre or medium but often in sculptures and paintings.
Traveling across Africa, he amassed scientific collections of birds, small mammals, and reptiles for North American museums.
In 1969, he sold his car to go to London and cast one of his model elephants in bronze. In 1970, he cast his first bronze and from then on dedicated himself to sculpting from life. He first focused on creating African wildlife sculptures and then sculpted the African people.
Sculpting Mustangs
While on a Kenyan safari, Dallas businessman Ben H. Carpenter (1924–2006) visited Glen’s Nairobi studio and started collecting his bronzes.In 1976, Carpenter commissioned Glen to create nine one-and-a-half times life-size mustangs tearing through a river. The sculpture would be the centerpiece of Carpenter’s new residential and business development “Las Colinas” on his family’s cattle ranch in Irving, Texas.
Glen took seven and a half years to research and create the monumental sculpture.
Centuries of crossbreeding have led America’s mustangs to differ from their ancestors. To depict the original mustangs, Glen traced the bloodlines back to southern Spain and used Andulusian horses as his models.
In his Nairobi studio, Glen sculpted many small scale models, in varying poses, before deciding on the monument’s dynamic final design.
Some elements of Robert Glen's sculpture. Glen created each bronze mustang from life. On the right, an old mustang tentatively approaches the water, as a gelding in the background leaps in and follows the herd. David Lloyd/SWA
“I was very keen to try and make them all as lifelike and spiritual as you can get it,” Glen said in an interview with Irving Community Television Network (ICTN). He carved minute details such as the wooly hair of a gelding and the frail frame of an old horse.
Glen varied each horse's age, expression, and stride. David Lloyd/SWA
He designed the nine mustangs galloping hard through a 400-foot creek, which included fountain jets that mimicked water splashing as the horses thrashed through the water.
The sculpture lit at evening emphasizes the animals' musculature. David Lloyd/SWA
He made a 15-by-15-foot scale model, using fish tank water fountains to mimic the water flow. Carpenter flew Las Colinas’s architect James Glenn Reeves to Nairobi for one night, just to see the “Mustangs of Las Colinas” model in Glen’s studio. Glen remembered Carpenter saying: “Reeves, these are the horses; now you design the buildings and plaza around them.”
The design of Wiliams Square provides seating for visitors along the central water channel. David Lloyd/SWA
Glen suggested that the monumental mustangs be made of concrete or resin that mimicked bronze, to keep the costs down. But Carpenter insisted on bronze. “He said they had to be in real bronze because they had to last forever,” Glen said to Irving’s ISD.
While the architect designed and built Las Colinas, Glen sculpted half-life-size mustangs and sent fiberglass molds of the models to a foundry in England.
Using the molds, the foundry created the one-and-a-half times life-size foam models that Glen covered in plasticine (oil-based clay) and carved out the mustangs’ flesh and bones. When he’d finished the fine details, he applied layers of resin to protect the models during the vigorous and complex bronze-casting process. The foundry completed the bronze casting in November 1981.
The mustangs were air shipped to Dallas. Installing the sculpture was an engineering feat—the horse tails alone weighed 700 pounds—but the work was installed in a year. It was dedicated on Sept. 25, 1984.
When Carpenter died, his family commissioned Glen to create a two-times the life-size sculpture of the businessman. It’s erected in Founder’s Park as if Carpenter is forever gazing toward Las Colinas.
Glen’s Mustang Legacy
Often artists revisit their earlier works with an eye on improving them, but Glen never had that inclination with his “Mustangs of Las Colinas” sculpture. “I love it—and I love everything about it,” he said to ICTN.He kept a lifelong interest in the well-being of Irving’s bronze mustangs, often visiting the development and being involved in the sculpture’s 2021–22 restoration.
The City of Irving began restoring the “Mustangs of Las Colinas” in February 2021, including repairing and repatinating the bronze sculpture, reinstating it to almost its original color. The stark concrete plaza of Williams Square has now been landscaped with trees, shrubs, and seating that allow visitors some shade to sit and admire the sculpture.
Generations of Las Colinas locals and visitors alike love the mustangs. And many of those people have memories—family picnics, graduation celebrations, and even marriage proposals—that have been made in front of Glen’s mustangs.
Glen hoped the mustangs would continue to inspire future generations. “In every gang of children that come, maybe there’s one that’s impressed slightly differently [than] the others and it may lead one day to that child becoming an artist or becoming involved … with horses or whatever. But I think it impresses kids in the most amazing way and hits on passions in them that we perhaps don’t understand,” he said in an interview with journalist Adam C. Schrader.
Irving Mayor Rick Stopfer said of the sculpture: “Robert Glen designed and crafted the most iconic sculpture in Irving and will forever be a part of the city’s history, culture, and beauty.”
To find out more about the “Mustangs of Las Colinas,” visit IrvingArchivesAndMuseum.org
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