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Lot description
Charles Robert Knight (American, 1874-1953) Saber Tooth Tigers Oil on board 15 x 36 inches (38.1 x 91.4 cm) Signed lower left: Charles R. Knight PROVENANCE: Private collection, Arkansas. Charles Robert Knight is renowned for his influential paintings of dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals, and is perhaps most famous for his large-scale murals still on view today at the Museum of Natural History in New York. As a child, Knight was deeply interested in nature and animals, and spent many hours copying the illustrations from his father's natural history books. Though legally blind because of astigmatism and a subsequent injury to his right eye, Knight pursued his artistic talents with the help of specially-designed glasses, and at the age of twelve, he enrolled at the Metropolitan Art School to become a commercial artist. 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 a prehistoric pig whose fossilized bones were on display. Though many artists at the time were reluctant to make such restorations, given the amount of guesswork involved, Knight applied his knowledge of modern pig anatomy to make the painting as realistic as possible, 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 for their fossil halls. These paintings were hugely popular among visitors, and Knight continued to work with the museum well until the 1930s, painting what would become some of the world's most celebrated images of dinosaurs, prehistoric mammals, and prehistoric humans. Soon, natural history museums throughout the country began requesting Knight paintings for their own fossil exhibits including the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles. In 1926, Knight began a 28 mural series for Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History, a project that chronicled the history of life on earth and took four years to complete. While producing 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 (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. HID01801242017