Directly or indirectly, many wildlife artists today have been influenced by the work of Francis Lee Jaques. During his prolific career, Jaques painted some 50 diorama backgrounds, completed numerous oil paintings and studies, and illustrated over 40 books. Largely self-taught, Jaques' artistic style was rooted in impressionism, though his work itself was realistic and distinctly American. As a diorama artist, Jaques is noted for emphasizing the essential shapes and forms of the animals he depicted. His knowledge of the natural world enabled him to integrate wildlife seamlessly into a surrounding environment.

White noddy and black noddy by F. L. Jaques.

Francis Lee Jaques was born in Geneseo, Illinois on September 28, 1887. When he was twelve, Jaques and his family moved from Illinois to Kansas to farm. Though chores such as plowing fields, planting corn, and cutting hay occupied most of his daylight hours, whenever he could, Jaques would accompany his father to hunt waterfowl in nearby marshes and creeks. The birds they hunted were not only food for the table—they also became the subjects of Jaques' drawings. The distinctive plumage and unique motions of waterfowl in flight would remain a hallmark of Jaques' art throughout his life.

Jaques' father was not a success as a farmer, and in the spring of 1903, the family packed their belongings into a wagon and headed north in search of inexpensive land. Just north of Aitkin, Minnesota they purchased a plot of land in an oxbow of the Mississippi River and moved into a log cabin located on the property. During his young adulthood, Jaques tried his hand at a variety of different occupations: lumberjack, railroad fireman, even taxidermist. He also fell in love with the forests and lakes of the Boundary Waters region, and explored them widely by canoe. Throughout it all, he continued to draw and paint.

In December 1917, Jaques was drafted into service for the First World War. During his military training, Jaques was stationed temporarily in San Francisco and later New York. In both cities, he took the opportunity to visit local museums, and found himself entranced by the new types of diorama exhibits he saw at them. During the early 20th century, habitat group dioramas represented a radical new way to present science. These dioramas strove to capture the young science of ecology (the science of the relationships between organisms and their environments) by portraying nature as a living system of interdependent species. The integration of science and art found in such dioramas, as well as their striking realism, made them very popular with the public.

King penguins by F. L. Jaques

Jaques was later shipped out to France, but armistice was declared before his unit's artillery arrived. After the war, Jaques returned to Minnesota and worked first as an electrician in the shipyards of Duluth and later, during the early 1920s, secured a position as an illustrator. However, the memories of his museum visits stayed with him and he dreamed of a career in which he could devote himself to his passion for nature. In 1924, Jaques sent a painting of a black duck to Dr. Frank Chapman, a curator in the Ornithology Department at the American Museum of Natural History. Soon thereafter, Jaques was hired as a staff artist by the Museum and found himself working alongside some of the country's leading scientists, traveling the world on Museum expeditions, and gaining recognition as one of America's foremost wildlife artists.

At the Museum, Jaques' job was to paint the giant, curved background murals behind habitat group dioramas. In order to be successful, the background artist needed to understand the ecologically important features of the environment, accurately portray any animals in the scene, and create the illusion of depth and distance within the confines of the exhibit space. A skillfully painted background mural would blend so well with the three dimensional foreground that it would almost transport the viewer into the scene it depicted.

Jaques' Black Ducks were selected to appear on a 1940 federal stamp

Before the advent of high-speed photography, Jaques was one of the few painters who truly understood bird flight and was able to capture it accurately in art. In addition, while many artists focused on the minute details of fur or feathers, Jaques felt that focusing on such fine details was largely meaningless. Instead, he defined the essence of a bird, or any other part of nature, by extracting and amplifying its intrinsic forms. Thus, though Jaques' diorama paintings were representational, they were also powerful works of abstract design. Perhaps most importantly, Jaques was able to integrate animals into their environments so well that the entire scene would reflect a vision of nature as an interconnected ecological system.

Today, many museum scholars consider Jaques' diorama backgrounds to be among of the finest ever created. Throughout his life, Jaques remained intensely sensitive to the natural world, and was driven to express this sensitivity in his art. His love of nature, and his view of it as a vital but endangered heritage, still shine in his paintings today. Jaques was in many ways an archetypal American—possessed with independence, pragmatism, and pioneer roots—and his work can be viewed as a visual expression of the American wilderness ethic.

“The shape of things has always given me the most intense satisfaction. Everything one sees and senses. Geese in a storm, a landfall after a long period at sea, horses in a fence corner, the first glimpse of the 'shining mountains' across the plain, the eroded bank of a stream winding through a pasture. With me the keenest interest of all has been in wildlife, and that includes its habitat.” — Francis Lee Jaques