Charles Robert Knight

Charles Robert Knight was working at a time when many fossil discoveries were fragmentary and dinosaur anatomy was not well understood, many of his illustrations have later been shown to be incorrect representations. Nevertheless, he has been hailed as "one of the great popularizers of the prehistoric past".

Charles Robert Knight studied at New York University Tandon School of Engineering. The recorded working language is English. The field of work recorded is painting and illustration. Work by Charles Robert Knight is recorded in the collections of Smithsonian American Art Museum, American Museum of Natural History, Princeton Art Museum and Memoria Chilena.

• Name — Charles R. Knight • Born — 21 October 1874 • Birthplace — Brooklyn, New York • Died — 15 April 1953 • Place of death — Manhattan, New York • Field — Painting • Illustration — Knight's iconic mural of a Triceratops confronting a Tyrannosaurus, painted for the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago in 1928, likely his most famous work

Knight was born in Brooklyn, New York City on October 21, 1874. As a child, Knight was deeply interested in nature and animals, largely thanks to his father's passion for the outdoors, and spent many hours copying the illustrations from his father's natural history books. His father also took him on trips to the American Museum of Natural History which fueled his knowledge for nature. Knight began drawing when he was around five or six years old. In later years he abandoned the practice of drawing from books altogether, and instead drew from life. Though legally blind because of astigmatism he inherited from his father and after his right eye was struck by a rock by a playmate, Knight pursued his artistic talents with the help of specially designed glasses which he used to paint inches from the canvas for the rest of his life. At the age of twelve, he enrolled at the Metropolitan Art School to become a commercial artist. In 1890, he was hired by church-decorating firm J. & R. Lamb to design stained-glass windows, and after two years with them, became a freelance illustrator for children's books and magazines, specializing in nature scenes. At this time, he met people like Rudyard Kipling and Arthur Conan Doyle. When Knight was eighteen, his father died and he took the little money his father left him and left home. • Illustration — Entelodon (then known as Elotherium), the first commissioned restoration of an extinct animal by Charles R. Knight, 1894 In his free time, Knight visited the American Museum of Natural History, attracting the attention of Dr. Jacob Wortman, who asked Knight to paint a restoration of an extinct hoofed mammal, Elotherium, whose fossilized bones were on display. Knight applied his knowledge of modern pig anatomy, and used his imagination to fill in any gaps. Wortman was thrilled with the final result, and the museum soon commissioned Knight to produce an entire series of watercolors to grace their fossil halls. After a tour of Europe by visiting many museums and zoos, Knight returned home where he met two key people in the history of paleontology, Edward Drinker Cope and Henry Fairfield Osborn. Osborn then created the new Department of Vertebrate Paleontology at AMNH and he had a revolutionary idea to put entire skeletons of dinosaurs on display. Originally, fossils were kept out of the public's eye and were then stored in store room shelves for study by scientists only. But Osborn had the idea of creating these new exhibits for the public. He assembled a team of himself, Knight, and Dr. William Diller Matthew. Knight sketched the skeletons while Matthew and Osborn mounted them. Cope died shortly after Knight met with him after he became impressed by Knight's sketches. The museum was amazed by his watercolor paintings and the successful exhibits. J. P. Morgan (the famous banker), who was a patron to the museum, helped finance the restorations of prehistoric life. His paintings were hugely popular among visitors, and Knight continued to work with the museum until the late 1930s, painting what would become some of the world's most iconic images of dinosaurs, prehistoric mammals, and prehistoric humans. • Illustration — Leaping Laelaps by Charles R. Knight, 1897--the dinosaur is now called Dryptosaurus One of Knight's best-known pieces for the American Museum of Natural History is 1897's Leaping Laelaps, which was one of the few pre-1960s images to present dinosaurs as active, fast-moving creatures (thus anticipating the "Dinosaur Renaissance" theories of modern paleontologists like Robert Bakker). Other familiar American Museum paintings include Knight's portrayals of Agathaumas, Allosaurus, Apatosaurus, Brontosaurus, Smilodon, and the Woolly Mammoth. All of these have been reproduced in numerous places and have inspired many imitations. Knight's work for the museum was not without critics, however. Although he spent considerable time at zoos studying the movements and habits of living animals, many curators argued that his work was more artistic than scientific, and protested that he did not have sufficient scientific expertise to render prehistoric animals as precisely as he did. While Knight himself agreed that his murals for the Hall of the Age of Man were "primarily a work of art," he insisted that he had as much paleontological knowledge as the museum's own curators. In 1900, Knight married Annie Humphrey Hardcastle and had a daughter named Lucy.

• Illustration — Smilodon from 1903 After Knight established a reputation at the American Museum of Natural History, other natural history museums began requesting paintings for their own fossil exhibits. In 1925, for example, Knight produced an elaborate mural for the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County which portrayed some of the birds and mammals whose remains had been found in the nearby La Brea Tar Pits. The following year, Knight began a 28-mural series for Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History, a project which chronicled the history of life on earth and took four years to complete. At the Field Museum, he produced one of his best-known pieces, a mural featuring Tyrannosaurus and Triceratops. This confrontation scene between a predator and its prey became iconic and inspired a huge number of imitations, establishing these two dinosaurs as "mortal enemies" in the public consciousness. The Field Museum's Alexander Sherman said, "It is so well loved that it has become the standard encounter for portraying the age of dinosaurs". • Illustration — Knight working on Stegosaurus in 1899 Knight's work also found its way to the Carnegie Museums in Pittsburgh, the Smithsonian Institution, and Yale's Peabody Museum of Natural History, among others. Knight also created sculptures of animals both living and extinct. Several zoos, such as the Bronx Zoo, Lincoln Park Zoo, and Brookfield Zoo, also approached Knight to paint murals of their living animals, and Knight enthusiastically complied. Knight was actually the only person in America allowed to paint Su Lin, a giant panda that lived at Brookfield Zoo during the 1930s. Although Knight's interest in animals and animal anatomy is well known, Knight also had an interest in botany. He often traveled to Florida and used the palm trees for his prehistoric paintings. While making murals for museums and zoos, Knight continued illustrating books and magazines, and became a frequent contributor to National Geographic. He also wrote and illustrated several books of his own, such as Before the Dawn of History (Knight, 1935), Life Through the Ages (1946), Animal Drawing: Anatomy and Action for Artists (1947), and Prehistoric Man: The Great Adventure (1949). Additionally, Knight became a popular lecturer, describing prehistoric life to audiences across the country. Eventually, Knight began to retire from the public sphere to spend more time with his grandchildren, mostly his granddaughter Rhoda, who shared his passion for animals and prehistoric life. In his later years, his eyesight began to deteriorate and he painted less often. From 1944 to 1946 he painted his final series of paintings at the National History Museum of Los Angeles County. In 1951, he painted his last work, a mural for the Everhart Museum in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Two years later, on April 15, 1953, Knight died in New York City.

• Illustration — Beached nautiloids from the Ordovician • Illustration — Early terrestrial plants from the Devonian • Illustration — Dimetrodon, Edaphosaurus, Casea and Diplocaulus from the Permian (1930)

• Illustration — Cynognathus and Kannemeyeria from the Triassic • Illustration — Plesiosaurs and Stenopterygius from the Jurassic • Illustration — Brontosaurus from the Jurassic (1930) • Illustration — Stegosaurus from the Jurassic (1927) • Illustration — Archaeopteryx, Compsognathus, and Rhamphorhynchus from coastal Jurassic Europe • Illustration — Tylosaurus, Protostega, and Pteranodon from Late Cretaceous seas • Illustration — Corythosaurus, Parasaurolophus, Palaeoscincus, Struthiomimus, and Edmontosaurus from the Late Cretaceous • Illustration — Nesting Protoceratops from Late Cretaceous Mongolia

• Illustration — Uintatherium and Orohippus from the Eocene • Illustration — Zeuglodon from the Eocene • Illustration — Brontotherium, Hyaenodon, and Stylemys from the Oligocene • Illustration — Oxydactylus, Menoceras, Parahippus, Dinohyus, and Moropus from the Miocene • Illustration — Teleoceras, Trilophodon, and oreodonts from the Pliocene • Illustration — American mastodon from the Pleistocene • Illustration — Palorchestes and Diprotodon from the Pleistocene of Australia • Illustration — Rancho La Brea Tar Pools from Pleistocene California • Illustration — Megaloceros from the Pleistocene • Illustration — Wooly Mammoths from the Pleistocene • Illustration — Cave Bears from the Pleistocene • Illustration — Dinornis from the Holocene

• Illustration — Cambrian Burgess Shale marine life • Illustration — Paleozoic eurypterid sea scorpions • Illustration — Dimetrodon

• Illustration — Trachodon • Illustration — Trachodon • Illustration — Ornitholestes • Illustration — Diplodocus • Illustration — Rearing Diplodocus • Illustration — Feeding Allosaurus • Illustration — Allosaurus eating • Illustration — Tyrannosaurus • Illustration — Stegosaurus • Illustration — Triceratops from 1904 • Illustration — Ichthyosaur with young • Illustration — Snake-necked Elasmosaurus

• Illustration — Phorusrhacos • Illustration — Arsinoitherium attacked by two Pterodon • Illustration — Hoplophoneus • Illustration — Dinictis and Protoceras from 1904 • Illustration — Mesonyx • Illustration — Coryphodon • Illustration — Eohippus • Illustration — Trilophodon or “Mastodon” angustidens • Illustration — Patriofelis • Illustration — Phenacodus • Illustration — Paraceratherium • Illustration — Mesohippus • Illustration — Entelodon • Illustration — Mastodon • Illustration — The Warren mastodon • Illustration — Imperial mammoth • Illustration — Wooly mammoths • Illustration — Neanderthal flintworkers from 1920