Centennial 1876

The Scientist as Artist

Out of the reconnaissance of the American West had arisen a man who combined two salient aspects of the future Smithsonian: science and art. William Henry Holmes, just 32 at the time of the transferal of power from Henry to Baird, had proven to be the most accom-plished artist cum topographer in America.

Born in the year the Smithsonian was founded, he came to Washington to study art in 1871, and met Mary, Joseph Henry's daughter. Invited to visit the Institution, Holmes was recognized as a talented illustra-tor, and soon was employed to draw fossils for Fielding Meek and William Dall. In the words of a friend, Holmes saw himself as "an original predestined member of the [Smithsonian] family."

In 1872, Holmes obtained a position on the Hayden survey, during which he revealed an ability to deal convincingly with vast, intimidating landscapes, his detailed drawings of natural panoramas doubling as meticulous topographical work. He took an active role in the two-year study of the San Juan region of what would become Arizona and New Mexico in the company of William Henry Jackson, and found in the lost cliff dwellings in the Mancos Valley, part of the Mesa Verde complex, a romantic vision augmented by his ongoing study of archaeology and ethnology.

[Canyon] [Canyon Painting]

Holmes's highly detailed, subtle illustrations of the geology of the Colorado River country combined intimate scientific knowledge with an imaginative use of light and shadow, creating the best illustrations ever done of the demanding Grand Canyon terrain.

Curtis M. Hinsley, Jr., wrote in Savages and Scientists that Holmes knew natural "emotion required restraint.... He fought that battle for years, resolving the issue only by harnessing his imagination to the service of a strongly inductive science." This sympathy between knowing and imagining also affected the Smithsonian, where Holmes would play an increasingly vital role.

A year after Henry's death, Holmes traveled to Europe to study art, but he was soon back in America a a ranking member of John Wesley Powell's Geological Survey. His interest in the origins of primitive art, so closely tied to scientific discovery and evolutionary theory, prefigured the later expansion of anthropology and the amassing of art at the Institution.

As William H. Goetzmann wrote in Exploration and Empire, Holmes was "a central figure in the develoF ment of so many scientific surveys, bureaus and art galleries that his career is a palimpsest of the cultural and institutional history of late-nineteenth-century America."

Holmes, like his Smithsonian "family," was about to re-invent himself.

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