Dudley M. Blakely (1902-82)

For the AMNH, Blakely contributed background paintings and foreground work to the Akeley Hall of African Mammals during the 1930s, such as the Gemsbok diorama. He also designed and fabricated exhibits and provided architectural drawings and models for the Cranbrook Institute of Science in Michigan, where he was in charge of the exhibit department. In addition Blakely designed and fabricated exhibits for the Boston Museum of Science.

Belmore Browne (1880-1954)

Browne received his training at the New York School of Art and the Academie Julian in Paris, pursuing a career as an illustrator and painter of wildlife and wilderness. As a naturalist, Browne participated in a number of AMNH expeditions to Alaska. He campaigned for the preservation of Mount McKinley (Denali) as a wildlife refuge. While director of the Santa Barbara School of the Arts from 1934 to 1936, Browne painted two backgrounds for the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History. He also painted backgrounds for the Boston Museum of Science.

George Browne (1918-58)

Trained by his father, Belmore Browne, George assisted him in the Hall of North American Mammals at the AMNH. Two of George Browne's background paintings can be found in the 1950s addition to the African Hall at the California Academy of Sciences.

Charles Shepard Chapman (1879-1962)

Chapman attended the Ogdensburg Free Academy and Pratt Institute, and was elected to the Council of the National Academy of Design in 1926. Chapman worked as an illustrator, but was best known for paintings of wilderness landscapes of the northern and western United States. Chapman painted the background for the mountain lion diorama in the American Museum's Hall of North American Mammals, which features the Grand Canyon.

Louis Aggasiz Fuertes (1874-1927)

Fuertes, who studied under Abbott Thayer, was primarily a bird painter and illustrated many books on birds. At the AMNH, he painted the large background scene for the flamingo habitat group (currently on display as a wall mural), as well as individual birds in the backgrounds for the whooping crane, Canada goose, and Cuthbert Rookery dioramas—all for the Hall of North American Birds. Collections of his paintings are held by the Museum's Department of Ornithology, as well as Cornell University and the New York State Museum in Albany.

Joseph Guerry (1906-67)

Guerry was trained at Missouri University, Kansas City Art School, and the Art Students League in New York. He served as an artist at the AMNH for thirty-seven years. The leopard diorama in the Akeley Hall of African Mammals is a fine example of Guerry's ability as a background painter. He also worked as a foreground and graphic artist throughout his career at the AMNH.
(Photo: Joseph Guerry's original background painting for the Mountain Goat diorama, c.1939.)

Charles J. Hittel (1861-1938)

Hittel was trained at the San Francisco School of Design (1881-83), the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Munich (1884-88), and the Academie Julian in Paris (1892-93). He primarily painted western wilderness themes. At the AMNH, Hittel contributed some of the earliest backgrounds for the Hall of North American Birds, such as the Golden Eagle. Other diorama backgrounds by Hittel can be found at the Zoological Museum in Berkeley, California.

Robert Bruce Horsfall (1868-1948)

Horsfall (right, with wife) studied art at the Cincinnati Academy of Art from 1886 to 1889, and at art academies in Munich and Paris from 1889 to 1893. He is best known as a bird illustrator, and was one of the first artists hired by Frank M. Chapman to paint diorama backgrounds for the Hall of North American Birds (1902). An avid field naturalist, Horsfall also painted backgrounds for the Bell Museum of Natural History in Minneapolis and the Peabody Museum of Natural History in New Haven, Connecticut.

Arthur August Jansson (1890-1960)

Trained at the Art Students League in New York from 1909 to 1912, as well as at the New York Industrial Arts School and the School of Modern Methods in Chicago, Jansson served as a background painter for dioramas in the AMNH's Hall of Asian Mammals, the Akeley Hall of African Mammals, and the Birds of the World hall. Jansson accompanied Carl Akeley on Akeley's final expedition to Africa in 1926 to gather field sketches for the dioramas in the African Hall. Jansson also completed diorama backgrounds for the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia and the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C.

Francis Lee Jaques (1887-1969)

Though Jaques had no formal art training, he was taught background painting by fellow artist Clarence C. Rosenkranz, and rose to become one of the Museum's most respected diorama artists. The majority of Jaques's backgrounds are at the AMNH, where he was employed as an artist from 1924 to 1942. In total he painted backgrounds for approximately eighty dioramas during his career. His diorama backgrounds can also be found at the Bell Museum of Natural History in Minneapolis; the Peabody Museum of Natural History in New Haven, Connecticut; the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia; the Boston Museum of Science; the University of Nebraska Museum; and the Illinois University Natural History Museum. Jaques is best known for his paintings of birds, especially waterfowl in flight. His greatest contribution to scientific illustration was his accompanying paintings for Robert Cushman Murphy's book Oceanic Birds of South America (1936). Collections of Jaques's bird paintings and studies can be found at the Peabody Museum, the Bell Museum, and the AMNH.

Matthew Kalmenoff (1905-1986)

"Kal," as he was known to his fellow artists, was employed at the AMNH from the 1950s through the early 1970s. His work can be found in the Hall of North American Forests, the renovated Hall of North American Birds, and in the Small Mammal Corridor of the Hall of North American Mammals.

Robert Kane (1910-82)

Kane (left, with apprentice Stephen Quinn) joined the staff of the AMNH in 1932 as an artist/assistant to William R. Leigh, working on the background paintings in the Akeley Hall of African Mammals. Kane's first assignment was to assist Leigh in the underpainting for the mountain gorilla diorama. In 1934 he was sent to Africa to collect materials and make field sketches for the dioramas in the African Hall. His best known background paintings are the hunting dog and the black rhinoceros dioramas for that hall.

William R. Leigh (1866-1955)

Leigh, though born in America, was trained in Europe, graduating from the Munich Art Academy in 1888. Specializing in subjects and landscapes related to the American West, his work was admired by taxidermist Carl Akeley, who hired Leigh in 1926. Accompanying Akeley to Africa, Leigh assisted in creating field sketches for the African Hall and, back in New York, served as master painter in charge of the creation of the backgrounds. All together, Leigh painted eight background paintings for the AMNH before returning to his preferred genre-painting scenes of the American West.

Sean Murtha (b. 1968)

Murtha graduated from Pratt Institute in New York with a BFA in painting in 1990, and joined the exhibition staff of the AMNH in 1996. That year Murtha participated in the Museum's expedition to the Central African Republic to collect materials for the Dzanga-Sangha rain forest diorama in the Hall of Biodiversity. Murtha contributed several background paintings during the renovation of the Milstein Hall of Ocean Life in 2003.

Hobart Nichols (1869-1962)

Nichols was a staff artist who did some of the earliest background paintings created for the AMNH, including those for the Hall of North American Birds—Peregrine Falcon, Canada Goose, and Loon, among others (1902) and the former Hall of Reptiles and Amphibians (1913-14), along with an early wolf diorama (1918).

Chris E. Olsen (1880-1965)

Considered an expert amateur entomologist and general naturalist in addition to being a painter, Olsen is best known for undersea exhibits such as the Andros Coral Reef and the Pearl Diver dioramas in the Milstein Hall of Ocean Life. His work was not restricted to painting, and he was an extraordinary foreground artist and model-maker as well. Olsen retired in 1947 after more than thirty years with the AMNH.

Clarence C. Rosenkranz (1871-1946)

Rosenkranz served as expedition artist during the AMNH's Vernay-Faunthorpe expeditions to Asia in the 1920s, and was subsequently hired to paint the backgrounds for the Hall of Asian Mammals. Background painter Francis Lee Jaques credits Rosenkranz as his greatest teacher. Under Rosenkranz's tutelage, and from his field sketches, Jaques painted the leopard diorama in the Hall of Asian Mammals. Other Rosenkranz backgrounds for the AMNH appear in the Hall of African Mammals (giant sable), as well as in the Academy of Natural Science in Philadelphia.

Carl Rungius (1869-1959)

Rungius immigrated to New York in 1894 after studying at the German Academy of Art in Berlin. He became a prolific wildlife painter and big game hunter, returning annually for almost fifty years to Banff in the Canadian Rockies to hunt and paint wildlife. Rungius was elected a member of the National Academy of Design in 1920. From 1913 through 1934 he worked on a series of paintings featuring threatened North American wildlife, commissioned by William Hornaday of the New York Zoological Society. Rungius's most notable contribution to the dioramas at the AMNH is the background painting for the monumental fighting bull moose diorama in the Hall of North American Mammals. The largest collection of his works are held by the Glenbow Museum in Alberta, Canada.

Frederick Scherer (b.1915)

Scherer started working at the AMNH at age nineteen on October 9, 1934—it was after he brought in a model of a bear he had sculpted that James L. Clark gave him the job. Scherer first worked as a foreground artist for the Akeley Hall of African Mammals, making plant models for the mountain gorilla diorama. Scherer became interested in background painting and asked James L. Clark for a chance to paint. James Perry Wilson became his mentor and Scherer began assisting on Wilson's tie-ins. Scherer would eventually paint fifteen backgrounds in the Museum. One of his most colorful tales happened while out on the tundra in Churchill, Manitoba, field-sketching for the tundra diorama in the Museum's Birds of the World hall. Scherer was stalked by wild dogs, and avoided becoming their prey by confronting the canines, who retreated when Scherer refused to be intimidated.

James Perry Wilson (1889-1976)

After graduating from Columbia University in 1914 with a degree in architecture, Wilson worked as a draftsman for nearly twenty years until he lost his job during the Depression. He had no formal art training and was largely a self-taught landscape painter with some early help from his family, who were artistically inclined. Wilson began his career at the AMNH in 1934 as an apprentice under William R. Leigh, who was working on the background painting, including a grid system for the transfer of an undistorted landscape onto the curved diorama background. By the time of his retirement in 1957, Wilson had painted thirty-eight diorama backgrounds at the AMNH. His background paintings can also be found at the Peabody Museum of Natural History in New Haven, Connecticut, and the Boston Museum of Science.