Wilhelm Kuhnert's greatest merit was his determination to pursue an unconventional artistic path that would introduce African wildlife to the general public for the first time. Rather than portraying exclusively caged zoo animals in an imaginary landscape, as did his contemporary animal painters, Kuhnert explored the regions of North and East Africa, to depict exotic animals in their natural environment.

Born in 1865, Kuhnert studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin. He was greatly influenced by Paul Meyerheim, head of the animal painting class at the Academy, who was well-known for his paintings of circus scenes and menageries. Although he worked in the nineteenth-century academic style, Kuhnert was also inspired by the plein air painting of Impressionism and undertook four intrepid expeditions in the German colonies of Africa to paint in the field. He produced a prodigious body of work based on the numerous studies sketched during his trips, where he recorded the great diversity of wildlife. His close observation of his models’ appearance and behaviour made him known as an expert in zoology. However, although his depictions of Africa are more realistic than the works produced by his contemporaries, they also express a romantic vision of the land.

In this depiction of a buffalo in a marsh, the artist pays particular attention to the animal’s surroundings, depicting the effect of light filtered across the marsh by clouds, and capturing the humid atmosphere of the landscape. The viewer's perspective is the same as the artist, who could only observe and draw the buffalo from a distance. This point of view emphasises the ephemeral aspect of the scene and represents the animal as inextricably bound to its habitat.

Today, Kuhnert is recognised as the leading interpreter of the tropical animal world in Germany and beyond, even though many of his works were sadly destroyed during the Second World War. His work is particularly prized by collectors in the USA, and a major retrospective of his work was held in the Shirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, in 2019.