in the foreground. Whether this ploy was always effec- 

 tive is a moot point, but these backgrounds called for 

 painting skills of the highest refinement, to say 

 nothing of a sharp eye for representing the various 

 forms of nature. 



An artist who possessed such skills and was blessed 

 with such an eye was Charles Abel Corwin ( 1857- 

 1938), who served as Field Museum's staff artist from 

 1903 to 1938, when he died at the age of 81. During this 

 period, Corwin painted more than 80 diorama back- 

 grounds and murals, as well as a large number of 

 conventional-size canvases featuring botanical sub- 

 jects. Many of his larger works are still on public view 

 in the Museum's halls, while his smaller canvases are 

 hanging in various locations in the Department of 

 Botany. 



A native of New York City, Corwin began his art 

 studies there in 1875, following this with several years 

 at the Royal Academy of Munich and tutelage under 

 Italian masters. In 1883 he joined the faculty of the 

 School of the Art Institute of Chicago. At the same 

 time he continued with his own painting and his work 

 was shown in numerous exhibits. While most of Cor- 

 win's work in the realm of natural history is to be found 

 at Field Museum, he is also represented by habitat 

 backgrounds in the American Museum of Natural His- 

 tory, New York; in the Los Angeles County Museum of 

 Natural History; and the California Academy of Nat- 

 ural Sciences, San Francisco. The total corpus of his 

 work must constitute one of the major achievements in 



American landscape art, though most of it has been 

 accessible only to the museum-goer. 



Upon his death, Corwin was succeeded as staff 

 artist by Arthur George Rueckert (1891-1948), who 

 had joined the Field Museum in 1923 as taxidermist- 

 preparator in the N. W. Harris Public School Exten- 

 sion. (Earlier he had been with a firm of commercial 

 taxidermists, the Illinois Department of Agriculture, 

 and the Chicago Academy of Sciences. ) Shortly after 

 joining the Field Museum, Rueckert transferred to the 

 Division of Taxidermy of the Department of Zoology 

 and, in addition to his work in the building, he partici- 

 pated in a number of expeditions and field trips as a 

 collector, notably with the Second Rawson-MacMillan 

 Subarctic Expedition of 1927-28. Among the back- 

 grounds he painted were those for habitat groups featur- 

 ing penguins (begun by Corwin), Weddell's seals, 

 alpine plants, Bahaman reef, crocodiles, intertidal reef, 

 and a great many bird dioramas. Rueckert died sudden- 

 ly in 1948, in mid-career, while still an active staff 

 member. 



The work of Corwin and Rueckert together 

 accounts for the overwhelming majority of the 

 Museum's habitat backgrounds. They also did eleven 8- 

 by-10 murals hanging in the Plants of the World Hall. 

 (An additional one of the set of twelve botany murals 

 was done in 1956 by John Pfiffner, an artist who is best 

 known for his technical drawings of monkeys and other 

 animals for scientific publications. ) 



Maidi Wiebe (FM1951-1962) and John Conrad 



Arthur George Rueckert adds finishing touches to background of alpine habitat group in Plants of the World Hall (1938). Emil Sella, curator of exhibits 

 for Botany, is at right. B«oi77 



