This website and the Collection which it documents naturally focuses on the written word. The importance of images in driving public appreciation for the need for conservation measures is undeniable, however. The purpose of this post is not to get deep into the impact images have had on the EC movement - that topic is discussed in various places on the website and widely discussed elsewhere. Rather, I am trying to coalesce info from across the site into one spot in order to properly recognize the key artistic contributors represented in the Collection.
While creating the Master Lists and Catalogue, I have consistently tried to highlight those artists and photographers whose contributions, to the books themselves and often to the EC movement generally, are recognizably impactful. [Please note, I do consider the photographers to be artists, I distinguish them purely for convenience.] I hope this post will help tie that info together.
William Gilpin coined the idea of "picturesque" in the context of landscape painting, a concept that lay between "beauty" and "sublime." It had a lasting impact on how landscapes were viewed and framed and drove important 19th century books focusing on visual representations of American nature scenes, as described immediately below. The Collection contains legendary collector and dealer Bill Reese's personal copy of Gilpin's Three Essays: On Picturesque Beauty; On Picturesque Travel; and On Sketching Landscape (1792), all bound together with a fourth edition of An Essay on Prints (first published 1768).
In my opinion, among the most beautiful and visually impressive works in the entire Collection is the mammoth two-volume Picturesque America (1872-4), with a combined 49 steel engraved plates and over 900 wood engravings, along with text by various authors on the subjects of the artists' work. The artists include Harry Fenn, John Douglas Woodward, Granville Perkins and Thomas Moran, among others. The popular work and format brought to the masses an ability to see and appreciate the natural wonders of the America, at a time when travel was still beyond the means of most, and before photography became the primary media for that exposure.
An earlier work in the same vein, Home Book of the Picturesque (1852), though smaller, highlights works by vaunted artists of the influential Hudson River School, including Thomas Cole, Frederic Church, R.F. Gignoux, J.F. Cropsey and Asher Durand. Accompanying essays were written by such luminaries as Washington Irving, William Cullen Bryant, James Fenimore Cooper, Susan Cooper (Rural Hours -1850), Bayard Taylor and others.
Before the "Picturesque" books were published, there were birds (a fact that will be unsurprising to any reader of the site). The multi-volume works of Alexander Wilson (American Ornithology - 1808-14) and John James Audubon (Birds of America - 1827-34, the edition in the Collection is from 1870) remain seminal in their artistic and environmental influence. [In the interest of completeness, Mark Catesby, who is not represented in the Collection, and Thomas Nuttall, who is, but not with his bird books (see instead his Genera of North American Plants - 1818 and Travels into Arkansa - 1821), would properly be considered other key early artists of American birds].
Ernest Thompson Seton was both a writer and an artist whose work focused on wildlife other than birds, which was unusual (at least in the Collection) at the end 19th century into the 20th. He is represented in the Collection with an inscribed copy of his first published work, Mammals of Manitoba (1886), and Biography of a Grizzly (1900). [In fairness, it should be noted that Audubon also produced a massive work of North American quadrupeds, also not in the Collection].
Later ornithological artists of note represented in the Collection include Louis Agassiz Fuertes (many appearances in the Collection, the earliest being Wright and Coues' Citizen Bird - 1897); Allan Brooks (in Bailey's Birds of New Mexico - 1928, and Forbush's Birds of Massachusetts -1925-29, and Leopold's Game Management - 1933); Frank W. Benson (in Bradford Torrey's Concord River - 1937); Don Eckelberry (in Richard Pough's Audubon Bird Guide: Eastern Land Birds (1946); and Roger Tory Peterson, who has multiple works in the Collection under his own name. [Robert Ridgway is an ornithological artist whose name I see referenced frequently, but who is not (yet) represented in the Collection.]
Towards the end of the 19th century and into the 20th, the art of wildlife photography became a more common way to illustrate books. Early practitioners of the art represented in the Collection include Richard and Cherry Kearton (With Nature and a Camera - 1897); William Finley and Herman T. Bohlman (American Birds - 1907); and Frank Chapman (Bird Studies with a Camera - 1900).
The remarkable Gene Stratton-Porter (Music of the Wild - 1910) was also a notable wildlife photographer, a skill which was perhaps overshadowed by her popularity as an author. While she too focused on birds, she also photographed and wrote extensively on moths.
The earliest important photographs in the Collection are those of William H. Jackson, who accompanied Ferdinand Hayden's explorations of the Yellowstone region and illustrated Hayden's 1883 USGS Report (Catalogued in the Government Publications section) and whose work, per the Library of Congress, "quickly became the most influential photographic representation of the Western landscape and its natural wonders." [Herbert W. Gleason was a very important early nature photographer who is not, to my knowledge, represented in the Collection. Among many other things, he traveled with John Muir and Stephen Mather photographing the NPs.]
Two other notable artists, W.H. Holmes and the aforementioned Thomas Moran, accompanied one or more of the big four great western surveys of the 19th century (those surveys are discussed in a separate blog post from July 2024). These artists are among my personal favorites in the Collection. Moran pops up in disparate places in Collection, including John Muir's Picturesque California (1888) and James T. Gardner's Niagara Report (1880 - Gov Pubs), in addition to the survey reports. Holmes' work graces several of the survey reports in the Government Publications section, including most notably Clarence Dutton's Tertiary History of the Grand Canon District (1882).
While Moran was a traditional painter, Holmes created incredibly detailed topographical drawings, a foldout copy of which was chosen to grace Wallace Stegner's Beyond the Hundredth Meridian (1955), his book about Powell. Holmes was a man with an extraordinary range of talents, as described elsewhere on the site. [Albert Bierstadt was another important early painter of the American West - he is not represented in the Collection to my knowledge.]
A group of photographs from Dutton's Tertiary History are being uploaded to the Catalogue entry, showing a dozen or show works from each of Moran and Holmes.
Perhaps the premier wildlife artist of the 20th century represented in the Collection is Bob Hines, the only person to hold the title of National Wildlife Artist for the US Fish and Wildlife Service. Hines illustrated numerous books in the Collection, including Rachel Carson's Edge of the Sea (1955). The Collection's copy of James Trefethen's Crusade of Wildlife (1961), published by the Boone & Crockett Club and illustrated by Hines, is personally inscribed by Interior Secretary Stewart L. Udall to Hines, and the Catalogue entry for that book has more about the artist.
There are many other notable 20th century nature artists represented in the Collection, among them being:
Isabel Cooper and John Tee-Van, whose work illustrates William Beebe's books, including with plates produced using a method invented by Cooper. Tee-Van later became head of the NY Zoological Society (Bronx Zoo - now the WCS). Beebe and Tee-Van as well as Helen Tee-Van, an artist who accompanied multiple Beebe expeditions and whose work illustrates Beebe's Arcturus Adventures (1926), each inscribed Beebe's Beneath Tropic Seas (1928).
Francis Lee Jacques - An author and conservationist in his own right, is represented in the Collection in various places, principally the books of Sigurd Olson and William O. Douglas.
Leslie Kouba: Two-time federal duck stamp contest winner who also provided illustrations for Sigurd Olson's books.
Peter Parnall: An author and illustrator best known for his children's books, he illustrated Edward Abbey's classic Desert Solitaire (1968) and Hal Borland's Beyond Your Doorstep (1962).
Charles Ripper: Well-known wildlife artist who illustrated John Terres' Laurel Hill to Siler's Bog (1969).
In my opinion, the most important artistic figure in the history of the environmental conservation movement was Ansel Adams. Adams was the premier nature photographer in our country's history, but he was also an important environmental activist in his own right, a force in the Sierra Club his entire adult life. His art is inextricably intertwined with his conservation work.
Adams is appropriately well represented throughout the Collection, both in his own books and in those of others, but two particularly notable works are The John Muir Trail (1938), and This is the American Earth (1960). The John Muir Trail (the signed and inscribed copy in the Collection is one of 500 originally issued) is one of those rare books whose very existence can be said to have resulted in a tangible, discrete conservation action, in this case the creation of Kings Canyon NP by FDR. See the Catalogue entry for more. This is the American Earth, with Nancy Newhall credited as co-author, was the first of the Sierra Club's hugely influential "exhibit format" coffee-table style photo books. A further discussion about the importance of those tomes, several of which are in the Collection, is in the associated Catalogue entry.
Another photo-forward book which might be said to have singularly led to a tangible result, in this case the cancellation of the planned Echo Park Dam in Dinosaur NM, is This is Dinosaur (1955), edited by Wallace Stegner with photos by Philip Hyde. David Brower of the Sierra Club was the driver of the project, which helped create the template for the exhibit format and battle books (the "exhibit format" books described above) of the next two decades.
Philip Hyde became one of two of the Sierra Club's principal conservation photographers of the era (along with Eliot Porter), illustrating a number of the exhibit format and other battle books such as Edward Abbey's Slickrock (1971) and quite a few others in the Collection. Both Hyde and Porter, like Adams, were active conservationists generally.
Eliot Porter is also well represented in the Collection, with several books under his own name as well as illustrating those of authors such as Edward Abbey and Peter Matthiessen. Porter's Glen Canyon (1963) provides one more illustration of a book whose very existence drove an important result - in this case persuading Interior Secretary Stewart Udall to rethink his support of dams in the Southwest, including especially proposed dams in the Grand Canyon. See the Catalogue entry for more.
Other notable photographers in the Collection include Hugo van Lawick, whose work helped popularize Jane Goodall's research and whose photos grace Peter Matthiessen's Sand Rivers (1981), and Ernst Haas, who was a very important photographer generally rather than one focused on nature specifically - nevertheless he did illustrate Edward Abbey's Cactus Country (1973).
Since this is a post about artists in the Collection, it would not be entirely complete without mentioning some others - including artists who are represented in the Collection with books that did not actually include their art (or at least not much), such as Seneca Ray Stoddard's Adirondacks guidebook (1893) and Rockwell Kent, an extraordinarily important 20th century artist whose work in the Collection is a journal from an Alaskan trip - Wilderness (1920).
Ding Darling was the premier editorial cartoonist of his day - his conservation work was largely separate, having served as head of the US Biological Survey under FDR and later fighting for the creation and expansion of wildlife refuges, including the one that now bears his name. He is represented in the Collection by his last book of editorial cartoons, Ding's Half Century (1962), because he needed to be represented in the Collection.
George Catlin was an artist whose work focused on Native Americans, but who also raised the alarm about the destruction of the lands upon which they depended. He is represented in the Collection in his 1841 book Native American Indians.
One famous artist represented in the Collection who is not really thought of as a conservationist at all is Frederick Remington, who illustrated the Collection's later edition of Francis Parkman's The Oregon Trail (1892 - originally published 1849) and contributed to Picturesque California (1888), edited by John Muir. Charles Burt engraved the plates illustrating J.T. Headley's The Adirondack (1849) but is best known for engraving the portrait of Lincoln that graced the $5 bill until 2000.
Speaking of engravers, a shout out to this underappreciated group. The first quality engraver born in the US, Cornelius Tiebout, illustrated William P.C. Barton's Flora of North America (1821-23). Talented engravers translated much great art (and probably more mediocre art) into a format convenient for publication. In Picturesque America for example, much of the engraving was done by Robert Hinshelwood and Samuel Valentine Hunt, while Hunt did much of the engraving for Home Book of the Picturesque as well.
On quite a tangential note - George Perkins Marsh had one of the country's preeminent collections of engravings, which he sold to the Smithsonian - it was literally the first item in the collection of that eminent institution.
Finally, it would be remiss not to note that movies, TV and other video have also had a huge impact on the public's appreciation for nature and conservation (think David Attenborough's Life series and Planet Earth, for example). While a book collection is obviously no place for video, I would nevertheless note that a surprising number of pioneering videographers are represented in the Collection in one way or another.
Specifically, Richard and Cherry Kearton (particularly Cherry) and also William Finley, all discussed above, were early pioneers of wildlife video. The fascinating explorer Carl von Hoffman, to whom Fairfield Osborn inscribed the Collection's copy of The Pacific World (1944 - Anthologies), was an early photographer and videographer, known especially for his footage of Pancho Villa. And the TV shows of Jacques Cousteau from the mid 1960s through the early 1980s were hugely impactful in the cause of marine conservation measures.
A CONCLUSION AND A REFLECTION:
Pictures are said to be worth a thousand words. As a lover of words, I don't entirely buy that. But the Collection contains much wonderful art, and the fact that art-forward books seem to me to represent a disproportionate share of all of the books in the Collection that I am able to identify as having driven, more or less by virtue of their very existence, concrete and tangible conservation developments, cannot be a coincidence.
[Prose-focused books falling into that category that leap to mind include Gardner's Niagara Report (1880 - Gov Pubs), Steel's Mountains of Oregon (1890), Carson's Silent Spring (1962), and Trimble and Williams' Testimony (1995 - Anthologies). There are surely others, arguably including Marsh's Man and Nature (1864) and Douglas' The Everglades (1947), but my strong sense is that easily identifiable, tangible impacts are disproportionately associated with the art-heavy books].
As I write this, I am a bit torn insofar as a potentially controversial (or at least highly debatable) discussion of "singularly impactful" books was and is not the purpose of this post. And heaven forbid any reader come away with the idea that any of the other 650+ books in the Collection (and counting) are one whit less important than those books so identified. But it would be remiss of me not to include the discussion, given what I perceive as a rather interesting dichotomy.
I will leave it at this: the focus of this site is on the words, but images and the artists behind them matter, and they warrant our focus and appreciation.
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