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Natural History Revealed

The Smithsonian Institution's mandate to collect the cultural, economic, and natural resources of a newly settled continent spawned innumerable exploratory expeditions, many with illustrators in tow. Vast numbers of specimens, artifacts, and curiosities from these forays, which included the U.S. Exploring Expedition to the Pacific (1838-42), eventually became the foundation of the U.S. National Museum collections. And the energy and vision of Spencer F. Baird, the first curator in charge of the National Museum, led to the establishment of a monumental program of publications on natural-history subjects.

In Baird's view, the reputation of a publication depended equally on text and illustration, and, at a time when the study of natural history and zoology was evolving into a true profession, he wanted each work to be "unexcelled." He also was convinced that only high-quality lithographic illustrations would help persuade the U.S. Congress to fund more expeditions

In 1878, when Baird became Secretary, he also became editor- in-chief of federal science publications, directing the production of volumes with excellent illustrations on the U.S. Exploring Expedition specimens and on the botanical, zoological, geological, and anthropological resources of the U.S. An expert on printing technologies, Baird always sought the most current drawing tools, and allowed specimens-even living plants and animals-to be sent away for illustration. Artwork of the time was reproduced with copper, steel, and wood engravings, and by lithography done largely by skilled immigrants from Europe.

Working in Paris, artist John H. Richard drew thousands of animal sketches for the mammal and reptile reports written by Baird and others, including Report on the United States and Mexican Boundary Survey. Steel engravings were made in the U.S. by master engravers, and later from daguerreotypes, which would eventually lead to photographic printing. Lithographic landscape illustrations, such as those painted by William Henry Holmes, who accompanied John Wesley Powell to the Southwestern U.S. and, much later, became the first director of the National Gallery of Art, depicted localities in which species new to science had been discovered.

For many years, hand-colored lithographs provided the only means of publishing colors and patterns of subjects, such as those in A History of North American Birds: Land Birds, by Baird, Thomas Brewer, and Robert Ridgway. In 1886, National Museum ornithologist and illustrator Ridgway published "Nomenclature of Colors," a chart of colors for standardizing taxonomic description that helped scientists describe colors based on his hand-colored plates.

A student of John J. Audubon, Baird encouraged young men to become professional illustrators. Even Charles Doolittle Walcott, fourth Secretary of the Institution, prepared and published some of his own illustrations of the famous Burgess Shale fossils, which he discovered in the Canadian Rockies in 1910. His wife, Mary Vaux Walcott, a largely self- trained botanical watercolorist, produced paintings for a four-volume set, North American Wildflowers, which was published by the Smithsonian in 1925.

By the 1890s, photographic printing was commonplace, and allowed for quick reproduction of either ink illustrations, with lines, stipples, and cross-hatching, or continuous tone, involving graphite, carbon dust, and charcoal. But this new kind of printing never really replaced illustration. Photographs, while useful, cannot reconstruct, simplify, or delineate important details, which depend on an illustrator's interpretation. Illustrations are more informative, especially with microscopic subjects.

Around the turn of the century, several illustrators were in the employ of the National Museum. Frederick A. Walpole, for example, produced fine botanical line drawings with a sable two- or three-hair brush. Notably, botanical art was open to women even when higher education was not, and more than one woman began her science career by illustrating specimens and then taking on research. One such woman was Mary Agnes Chase, who worked by day as an illustrator for the U.S. Department of Agriculture and by night in the National Museum herbarium. After 30 years, she became a senior Smithsonian botanist in charge of the collection of grasses.

By the 1960s, the National Museum of Natural History employed several full-time illustrators, and many others who lived nearby worked for the museum as contract artists. Meeting regularly to share illustration techniques, in 1968 these skilled artists incorporated as the Guild of Natural Science Illustrators, now an international group with more than 1,100 members. A professional society that grew out of the grand tradition of natural-science illustration, the guild promotes the teaching of techniques and standards of excellence in publication for which the Smithsonian, in great part because of its first naturalist and second Secretary, has so long been known.

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