Artists

Dioramas are brought to life by the artists who create them, from model-makers and taxidermists, to painters and foreground builders. The brilliant, passionate, and sometimes eccentric artists and naturalists who made the American Museum of Natural History's dioramas include the larger-than-life African explorer and taxidermist Carl Akeley, who survived a bull elephant charge and a leopard attack during his expeditions, which inspired some of the most extraordinary habitat groupings of African wildlife ever seen, and the legendary diorama artist James Perry Wilson, known as the "Invisible Artist" because he often described his work with the motto ars celare artem or "art to conceal art," reflecting his goal to imitate nature so closely that his own role became invisible.

For short profiles of many of the artists that have contributed to the Museum's dioramas from its beginnings right up through the present day, browse the three categories below.

The Art of J.P. Wilson

George Petersen and James Perry Wilson on location in Wyoming.

James Perry Wilson's great artistic skill and feeling are evident in many of the diorama backgrounds in the Hall of North American Mammals, including the majestic view of the Wyoming plains depicted in the Bison and Pronghorn Group. Wilson's views, whether of field, forest, or mountaintop, beautifully convey both the details and character of each scene and fuse imperceptibly with the scene's foreground. Each diorama represents a specific location, carefully selected in the field and faithfully depicted in the foreground exhibits and the background paintings.

Painting a diorama background poses a technical problem, as the background wall is usually curved in order to make room for foreground objects and to create a feeling of depth in the view. This means that the artist must adjust his or her technique to meet the demands of this unusual canvas.

To do so, Wilson would first draw a grid on the wall and then fine-tune it to the wall's curvature so that it matched a similar grid on a photo of the location. Using this grid for guidance, Wilson could precisely scale and reproduce all of the elements in the scene. The next step was to draw a charcoal sketch of the background scene over the basic grid which would serve as a guide for the painting process.