ART AND SCIENCE IN THE AMERICAN MUSEUM 



89 



stead of as far-reaching a discourage- 

 ment. 



One of the first men to be drawn into the 

 American Museum to help in the correla- 

 tion of science and art was Charles R. 

 Knight and the work w^as financed by the 

 late Mr. J. Pierpont Mor- 

 gan. He came in 1896 to 

 make restorations of fos- 

 sil animals under the 

 supervision of Professor 

 Henry Fairfield Osborn. 

 He had always liked best 

 to draw animals, although 

 at sixteen years of age he 

 had begun studying at 

 the Metropolitan Mu- 

 seum of Art, working in 

 ornamental design and 

 architecture. Also he 

 had studied at the Archi- 

 tectural League under 

 George de Forest Brusli 

 and Willard L. Metcalf. 

 In fact he had spent three 

 years at Lamb's design- 

 ing stained glass win- 

 dows, since those early 

 days, but his interest al- 

 ways lay in animal poi- 

 traiture. 



All the old keepers at 

 the Central Park Zoo re- 

 member him w^hen he 

 was a very small boy and 

 was brought by his father 

 on Saturdays to draw 

 the animals. This was 

 before the organization 

 of the Zoological Park in 

 the Bronx which bl'ought 

 such large opportunities to him, with a 

 freedom for work far in advance of that 

 allowed in the zoological parks of Europe, 

 where however he has done considerable 

 study. It was while drawing at the 



Jardin des Plantes in Paris that his work 

 was stimulated by the admiration of 

 Gerome and Fremiet with whom he had 

 personal acquiantance. 



In 189() when he came to the American 

 ^Museum he brought a full equipment: 

 mastery in the techniciue of pencil, water 



Arsinoitherium — Restoration of a herbivorous mammal. The scene 

 is in Egypt on the site of the former Lake Moeris. There in the 

 far-off Eocsne times flourished a multitude of strange animals. In 

 the painting the Arsinoitherium, named in honor of the Egyptian 

 queen, stands at bay warding off a snarling pack of wolflike mammals 



color and oil, and knowledge of the ana- 

 tomical structure of living animals gained 

 not from photographs but from life itself 

 — these added to enthusiasm. His work 

 that he began then and has continued 



