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69-511: Caffin's earliest writings did not suggest that he would ever be sympathetic to the modernist attack on traditional aesthetic values. His many articles and books, which were surveys intended for a general audience, focused on the major names in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century European painting and sculpture, and when considering art from the late nineteenth century, praised the work of artists like Abbott Thayer and George de Forest Brush , who came to epitomize everything Modernism would reject. He

138-409: A 1915 Picasso exhibition, he admitted that all artists must follow "the inevitable call of their own genius" but that Picasso "has reached a point of intentional abstraction which I, for one, cannot follow." Charles Caffin was neither a reactionary opposed to Modernism nor an unabashed avant-garde supporter. Sharing his enthusiasm and his skepticism, he provided a forum for reasoned debate and applauded

207-484: A favorite subject, and when the area was threatened with development Thayer campaigned successfully for its preservation. By his own admission, Thayer often suffered from a condition that is now known as bipolar disorder . In his letters, he described it as "the Abbott pendulum", by which his emotions alternated between the two extremes of (in his words) "all-wellity" and "sick disgust". This condition apparently worsened as

276-531: A formal pupil, was invited to paint alongside the older artist in 1886, and wrote "Thayer's the first great man I ever knew, and I can't quite get used to it." In a letter to Thomas Wilmer Dewing ( c.  1917 , in the collection of the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution ), Thayer reveals that his method was to work on a new painting for only three days. If he worked longer on it, he said, he would either accomplish nothing or would ruin it. So on

345-476: A naturalist, studies the world by observing plants and animals directly. Because organisms are functionally inseparable from the environment in which they live and because their structure and function cannot be adequately interpreted without knowing some of their evolutionary history, the study of natural history embraces the study of fossils as well as physiographic and other aspects of the physical environment". A common thread in many definitions of natural history

414-544: A part of science proper. In Victorian Scotland, the study of natural history was believed to contribute to good mental health. Particularly in Britain and the United States, this grew into specialist hobbies such as the study of birds , butterflies, seashells ( malacology / conchology ), beetles, and wildflowers; meanwhile, scientists tried to define a unified discipline of biology (though with only partial success, at least until

483-455: A portrait by Thomas Wilmer Dewing at a 1916 exhibition at the Knoedler gallery, Caffin wrote, "It is with curious reflection that one studies its dead harmonies of color, its inert vibrations...and recalls that they once seemed to awaken a response in one's imagination...Poor old fin-de-siècle exquistiveness, how completely everybody but the artist has grown beyond you!" Caffin had his enemies in

552-595: A time due to nervous exhaustion. In an effort to avert suicidal thoughts, he sought help at a sanatorium in Wellesley, Massachusetts . At age 71, Thayer, disabled by a series of strokes , died quietly at home on May 29, 1921. In October 2008, a documentary film about Thayer's life and work premiered at the Smithsonian American Art Museum . Titled Invisible: Abbott Thayer and the Art of Camouflage, it featured

621-470: A type of observation and a subject of study, it can also be defined as a body of knowledge, and as a craft or a practice, in which the emphasis is placed more on the observer than on the observed. Definitions from biologists often focus on the scientific study of individual organisms in their environment, as seen in this definition by Marston Bates: "Natural history is the study of animals and Plants—of organisms. ... I like to think, then, of natural history as

690-593: A wide selection of his drawings and paintings, archival photographs, historic documents, and interviews with humorist P. J. O'Rourke , Richard Meryman , Jr. (whose father was Thayer's student), camouflage scholar Roy R. Behrens, Smithsonian curator Richard Murray, Thayer's friends and relatives, and others. Naturalist Natural history is a domain of inquiry involving organisms , including animals , fungi , and plants , in their natural environment , leaning more towards observational than experimental methods of study. A person who studies natural history

759-598: Is a cross-discipline umbrella of many specialty sciences; e.g., geobiology has a strong multidisciplinary nature. The meaning of the English term "natural history" (a calque of the Latin historia naturalis ) has narrowed progressively with time, while, by contrast, the meaning of the related term "nature" has widened (see also History below). In antiquity , "natural history" covered essentially anything connected with nature , or used materials drawn from nature, such as Pliny

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828-460: Is also echoed by H.W. Greene and J.B. Losos: "Natural history focuses on where organisms are and what they do in their environment, including interactions with other organisms. It encompasses changes in internal states insofar as they pertain to what organisms do". Some definitions go further, focusing on direct observation of organisms in their environments, both past and present, such as this one by G.A. Bartholomew: "A student of natural history, or

897-411: Is called a naturalist or natural historian . Natural history encompasses scientific research but is not limited to it. It involves the systematic study of any category of natural objects or organisms, so while it dates from studies in the ancient Greco-Roman world and the mediaeval Arabic world , through to European Renaissance naturalists working in near isolation, today's natural history

966-644: Is described as having been modeled on the coloration of a seagull . Thayer and Brush's experiments with camouflage continued into World War I , both collaboratively and separately. Early during that war, for example, Brush developed a transparent airplane, while Thayer continued his interest in disruptive or high-difference camouflage, which was not unlike what British ship camouflage designer Norman Wilkinson would call dazzle camouflage (a term that may have been inspired by Thayer's writings, which referred to disruptive patterns in nature as "razzle dazzle".) Gradually, Thayer and Brush entrusted their camouflage work to

1035-497: Is perhaps best known for his 'angel' paintings, some of which use his children as models. During the last third of his life, he worked together with his son, Gerald Handerson Thayer, on a book about protective coloration in nature, titled Concealing-Coloration in the Animal Kingdom . First published by Macmillan in 1909, then reissued in 1918, it may have had an effect on military camouflage during World War I . However it

1104-419: Is sometimes referred to as the "father of camouflage". While he did not invent camouflage, he was one of the first to write about disruptive patterning to break up an object's outlines, about distractive markings , about masquerade , as when a butterfly mimics a leaf (though here he was anticipated by Bates , Wallace , and Poulton ), and especially about countershading . Beginning in 1892, he wrote about

1173-399: Is the inclusion of a descriptive component, as seen in a recent definition by H.W. Greene: "Descriptive ecology and ethology". Several authors have argued for a more expansive view of natural history, including S. Herman, who defines the field as "the scientific study of plants and animals in their natural environments. It is concerned with levels of organization from the individual organism to

1242-676: The American Camouflage Corps .. Despite rapid changes in the art world in the early 20th century, Thayer's reputation remained strong. He was an early member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters . Yale University offered him an honorary degree in 1916, and the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh mounted an exhibition of his work in 1919 that included over fifty paintings. The view from his home of Mt. Monadnock became

1311-538: The American Society of Naturalists and Polish Copernicus Society of Naturalists . Professional societies have recognized the importance of natural history and have initiated new sections in their journals specifically for natural history observations to support the discipline. These include "Natural History Field Notes" of Biotropica , "The Scientific Naturalist" of Ecology , "From the Field" of Waterbirds , and

1380-506: The British War Office , trying unsuccessfully to persuade them to adopt a disruptively patterned battledress , in place of monochrome khaki , though he was too anxious to attend the meeting in person. Meanwhile, Thayer and Gerome Brush's proposal for the use of countershading in ship camouflage was approved for use on American ships, and a handful of Thayer enthusiasts (among them Barry Faulkner ) recruited hundreds of artists to join

1449-468: The Industrial Revolution prompted the development of geology to help find useful mineral deposits. Modern definitions of natural history come from a variety of fields and sources, and many of the modern definitions emphasize a particular aspect of the field, creating a plurality of definitions with a number of common themes among them. For example, while natural history is most often defined as

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1518-476: The Natural History Society of Northumbria founded in 1829, London Natural History Society (1858), Birmingham Natural History Society (1859), British Entomological and Natural History Society founded in 1872, Glasgow Natural History Society, Manchester Microscopical and Natural History Society established in 1880, Whitby Naturalists' Club founded in 1913, Scarborough Field Naturalists' Society and

1587-459: The Renaissance , and quickly became a third branch of academic knowledge, itself divided into descriptive natural history and natural philosophy , the analytical study of nature. In modern terms, natural philosophy roughly corresponded to modern physics and chemistry , while natural history included the biological and geological sciences. The two were strongly associated. During the heyday of

1656-472: The Renaissance , making it one of the longest-lasting of all natural history books. From the ancient Greeks until the work of Carl Linnaeus and other 18th-century naturalists, a major concept of natural history was the scala naturae or Great Chain of Being , an arrangement of minerals, vegetables, more primitive forms of animals, and more complex life forms on a linear scale of supposedly increasing perfection, culminating in our species. Natural history

1725-514: The gentleman scientists , many people contributed to both fields, and early papers in both were commonly read at professional science society meetings such as the Royal Society and the French Academy of Sciences —both founded during the 17th century. Natural history had been encouraged by practical motives, such as Linnaeus' aspiration to improve the economic condition of Sweden. Similarly,

1794-638: The modern evolutionary synthesis ). Still, the traditions of natural history continue to play a part in the study of biology, especially ecology (the study of natural systems involving living organisms and the inorganic components of the Earth's biosphere that support them), ethology (the scientific study of animal behavior), and evolutionary biology (the study of the relationships between life forms over very long periods of time), and re-emerges today as integrative organismal biology. Amateur collectors and natural history entrepreneurs played an important role in building

1863-515: The École des Beaux-Arts , with Henri Lehmann and Jean-Léon Gérôme , and where the American artist George de Forest Brush became his closest friend. Returning to New York, he established his own portrait studio (which he shared with Daniel Chester French ), became active in the Society of American Painters, and began to take in apprentices. Life became all but unbearable for Thayer and his wife during

1932-533: The Elder 's encyclopedia of this title , published c.  77 to 79 AD , which covers astronomy , geography , humans and their technology , medicine , and superstition , as well as animals and plants. Medieval European academics considered knowledge to have two main divisions: the humanities (primarily what is now known as classics ) and divinity , with science studied largely through texts rather than observation or experiment. The study of nature revived in

2001-659: The Natural History Institute (Prescott, Arizona): Natural history – a practice of intentional focused attentiveness and receptivity to the more-than-human world, guided by honesty and accuracy – is the oldest continuous human endeavor. In the evolutionary past of our species, the practice of natural history was essential for our survival, imparting critical information on habits and chronologies of plants and animals that we could eat or that could eat us. Natural history continues to be critical to human survival and thriving. It contributes to our fundamental understanding of how

2070-539: The Sorby Natural History Society, Sheffield , founded in 1918. The growth of natural history societies was also spurred due to the growth of British colonies in tropical regions with numerous new species to be discovered. Many civil servants took an interest in their new surroundings, sending specimens back to museums in the Britain . (See also: Indian natural history ) Societies in other countries include

2139-475: The Stieglitz circle, Temple Scott, wrote an "histoire à clef" that offered a particularly unflattering portrait of Caffin, thinly disguised as "Charles Cockayne," a critic of complacent self-assurance. In the years between the 1913 Armory Show , which he found impressive but dangerously sensationalistic, and his death in 1918, Caffin energetically covered the changing New York art world and urged his readers to give

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2208-631: The Thayers typically slept outdoors year-round in order to enjoy the benefits of fresh air, and the three children were never enrolled in a school. The younger two, Gerald and Gladys , shared their father's enthusiasms, and became painters. In 1898, Thayer visited St Ives, Cornwall and, with an introductory letter from C. Hart Merriam , the Chief of the US Biological Survey in Washington, D.C. , applied to

2277-479: The controversy grew about his camouflage findings, most notably when they were denounced by former U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt . As he aged, he suffered increasingly from panic attacks (which he termed "fright-fits"), nervous exhaustion, and suicidal thoughts, so much so that he was no longer allowed to go out in his boat alone on Dublin Pond . Thayer continued to paint, but was compelled to stop working for weeks at

2346-545: The difficult new painters a chance. He made a case to skeptical viewers for the work of European modernists like Henri Matisse , Constantin Brâncuși , and Francis Picabia . Yet he also shared his own doubts. While he could see the innovative qualities of Paul Cézanne and Georges Braque , he dismissed the "pinhead humor" of Marcel Duchamp and found the Coney Island paintings of Joseph Stella aggressively vulgar. Writing about

2415-403: The diversity of the natural world. Natural history was understood by Pliny the Elder to cover anything that could be found in the world, including living things, geology, astronomy, technology, art, and humanity. De Materia Medica was written between 50 and 70 AD by Pedanius Dioscorides , a Roman physician of Greek origin. It was widely read for more than 1,500 years until supplanted in

2484-426: The early 1880s, when two of their small children died unexpectedly, one year apart. Emotionally devastated, they spent the next several years relocating from place to place. Although he was not yet secure financially, Thayer's growing reputation resulted in more portrait commissions than he could accept. Among his sitters were George Washington Cable , Mark Twain , and Henry James . He also made numerous portraits of

2553-410: The ecosystem, and stresses identification, life history, distribution, abundance, and inter-relationships. It often and appropriately includes an esthetic component", and T. Fleischner, who defines the field even more broadly, as "A practice of intentional, focused attentiveness and receptivity to the more-than-human world, guided by honesty and accuracy". These definitions explicitly include the arts in

2622-710: The emergence of professional biological disciplines and research programs. Particularly in the 19th century, scientists began to use their natural history collections as teaching tools for advanced students and the basis for their own morphological research. The term "natural history" alone, or sometimes together with archaeology, forms the name of many national, regional, and local natural history societies that maintain records for animals (including birds (ornithology), insects ( entomology ) and mammals (mammalogy)), fungi ( mycology ), plants (botany), and other organisms. They may also have geological and microscopical sections. Examples of these societies in Britain include

2691-411: The field of botany, be it as authors, collectors, or illustrators. In modern Europe, professional disciplines such as botany, geology, mycology , palaeontology , physiology , and zoology were formed. Natural history , formerly the main subject taught by college science professors, was increasingly scorned by scientists of a more specialized manner and relegated to an "amateur" activity, rather than

2760-634: The field of natural history, and are aligned with the broad definition outlined by B. Lopez, who defines the field as the "Patient interrogation of a landscape" while referring to the natural history knowledge of the Eskimo ( Inuit ). A slightly different framework for natural history, covering a similar range of themes, is also implied in the scope of work encompassed by many leading natural history museums , which often include elements of anthropology, geology, paleontology, and astronomy along with botany and zoology, or include both cultural and natural components of

2829-812: The foot of Mount Monadnock . In that rural setting, he became an amateur naturalist (in his own words, he was "bird crazy"), a hunter and a trapper. Thayer closely studied Audubon 's Birds of America , experimented with taxidermy , and made his first artworks: watercolor paintings of animals. At the age of fifteen he was sent to the Chauncy Hall School in Boston, where he met Henry D. Morse, an amateur artist who painted animals. With guidance from Morse, Abbott developed and improved his painting skills, focusing on depictions of birds and other wildlife, and soon began painting animal portraits on commission. He also taught his sister, Ellen Thayer Fisher , techniques that he

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2898-423: The fourth day, he would instead take a break, getting as far from the work as possible, but meanwhile instruct each student to make an exact copy of that three-day painting. Then, when he did return to his studio, he would (in his words) "pounce on a copy and give it a three-day shove again". As a result, he would end up with alternate versions of the same painting, in substantially different finished states. Thayer

2967-456: The function of countershading in nature, by which forms appear less round and less solid through inverted shading, by which he accounted for the white undersides of animals. This finding is still accepted widely, and is sometimes now called Thayer's Law . However, he became obsessed with the idea that all animals are camouflaged, spoiling his case by arguing that conspicuous birds like peacocks and flamingoes were in fact cryptically colored. He

3036-454: The lord of the Manor of St Ives and Treloyhan, Henry Arthur Mornington Wellesley, the 3rd Earl Cowley , for permission to collect specimens of birds from the cliffs at St Ives. During this latter part of his life, among Thayer's neighbors was George de Forest Brush , with whom (when they were not quarreling) he collaborated on camouflage. It is difficult to categorize Thayer simply as an artist. He

3105-411: The modernist camp, who could not forgive him his more conservative tastes. Willard Huntington Wright , an early advocate of abstract painting, found Caffin's growing interest in advanced art suspicious and suggested that hypnotism must be responsible for his conversion to a broader view, as "the headmaster in the kindergarten of painting" was not clever enough to see the light on his own. Another writer in

3174-525: The new art he saw (e.g., Cubism and Synchromism ) was confusing and disorienting to him, but much of it was a revelation which he was pleased to discuss in his newspaper and magazine columns. Though he was always more comfortable writing about the Old Masters or painters from his youth like James Abbott McNeill Whistler , he acquired a reputation as a writer with an open mind. He could also acknowledge that his own perspective had changed over time. Examining

3243-409: The paint, or (in one instance at least, according to Rockwell Kent ) using a broom instead of a brush to lessen the sense of rigidity in a newly finished, still-wet painting. Thayer was largely surrounded by women, be they his family, housekeepers, models or students. Biographer Ross Anderson believed that in his mind "feminine virtue and aesthetic grandeur were inextricably linked"; Thayer felt that

3312-484: The press and even other artists contributed to the degradation of women by emphasizing their sexuality, rather than exalting their moral attributes. When he began to add wings to his figures in the late 1880s, he was making more obvious the transcendent qualities he saw in the female subject: Doubtless my lifelong passion for birds has helped to incline me to work wings into my pictures; but primarily I have put on wings probably more to symbolize an exalted atmosphere (above

3381-440: The realm of genre painting) where one need not explain the action of the figures." Thayer's first use of the theme was the painting Angel . The wings were nailed into a board, in front of which his daughter Mary stood. The poignancy of Thayer's imagery was found wanting by art critic Clarence King , who suggested the use of buckets "to catch the dripping sentiment", yet other critics like Mariana Van Rensselaer were impressed by

3450-442: The responsibility of their sons. Concealing-Coloration in the Animal Kingdom (1909), which had taken seven years to prepare, was credited to Thayer's son, Gerald. At about the same time, Thayer once again proposed ship camouflage to the U.S. Navy (and was again unsuccessful), this time working not with Brush, but with Brush's son, Gerome (named in honor of his father's teacher). In 1915, during World War I, Thayer made proposals to

3519-470: The serenity of Thayer's vision, and saw a "distinctly modern" approach in his traditional compositions. He survived with the help of his patrons, among them the industrialist Charles Lang Freer . Some of his finest works are in the collections of the Freer Gallery of Art , Metropolitan Museum of Art , National Academy of Design , Smithsonian American Art Museum , and Art Institute of Chicago . Thayer

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3588-451: The study of life at the level of the individual—of what plants and animals do, how they react to each other and their environment, how they are organized into larger groupings like populations and communities" and this more recent definition by D.S. Wilcove and T. Eisner: "The close observation of organisms—their origins, their evolution, their behavior, and their relationships with other species". This focus on organisms in their environment

3657-515: The system of the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus . The British historian of Chinese science Joseph Needham calls Li Shizhen "the 'uncrowned king' of Chinese naturalists", and his Bencao gangmu "undoubtedly the greatest scientific achievement of the Ming". His works translated to many languages direct or influence many scholars and researchers. A significant contribution to English natural history

3726-442: The testing of aesthetic boundaries and standards. He understood that he lived in changing times. Abbott Thayer Abbott Handerson Thayer (August 12, 1849 – May 29, 1921) was an American painter, naturalist , and teacher. As a painter of portraits , figures, animals, and landscapes , he enjoyed a certain prominence during his lifetime, and his paintings are represented in major American art collections. He

3795-1081: The three remaining Thayer children, Mary, Gerald, and Gladys , and used them as models for symbolic compositions such as Angel (1887) and Virgin Enthroned (1891). After her father died, Thayer's wife lapsed into an irreversible melancholia, which led to her confinement in an asylum, the decline of her health, and her eventual death on May 3, 1891, from a lung infection. Soon after, Thayer married their long-time friend, Emmeline "Emma" Buckingham Beach , whose grandfather Moses Yale Beach owned The New York Sun . He and his second wife spent their remaining years in rural New Hampshire, living simply and working productively. In 1901, they settled permanently in Dublin, New Hampshire , where Thayer had grown up. The Thayer family frequently entertained prominent guests there such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Mark Twain . Eccentric and opinionated, Thayer grew more so as he aged, and his family's manner of living reflected his strong beliefs:

3864-475: The world works by providing the empirical foundation of natural sciences, and it contributes directly and indirectly to human emotional and physical health, thereby fostering healthier human communities. It also serves as the basis for all conservation efforts, with natural history both informing the science and inspiring the values that drive these. As a precursor to Western science , natural history began with Aristotle and other ancient philosophers who analyzed

3933-664: The world's large natural history collections, such as the Natural History Museum, London , and the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC. Three of the greatest English naturalists of the 19th century, Henry Walter Bates , Charles Darwin , and Alfred Russel Wallace —who knew each other—each made natural history travels that took years, collected thousands of specimens, many of them new to science, and by their writings both advanced knowledge of "remote" parts of

4002-564: The world. The plurality of definitions for this field has been recognized as both a weakness and a strength, and a range of definitions has recently been offered by practitioners in a recent collection of views on natural history. Prior to the advent of Western science humans were engaged and highly competent in indigenous ways of understanding the more-than-human world that are now referred to as traditional ecological knowledge . 21st century definitions of natural history are inclusive of this understanding, such as this by Thomas Fleischner of

4071-777: The world—the Amazon basin , the Galápagos Islands , and the Indonesian Archipelago , among others—and in so doing helped to transform biology from a descriptive to a theory-based science. The understanding of "Nature" as "an organism and not as a mechanism" can be traced to the writings of Alexander von Humboldt (Prussia, 1769–1859). Humboldt's copious writings and research were seminal influences for Charles Darwin, Simón Bolívar , Henry David Thoreau , Ernst Haeckel , and John Muir . Natural history museums , which evolved from cabinets of curiosities , played an important role in

4140-459: Was an admirer of Tonalism and the realism of Gari Melchers . Caffin's interest in pictorial photography led to the most important and productive friendship of his life with Alfred Stieglitz . Stieglitz enlisted Caffin as a writer for his journal Camera Work , for which he wrote appreciations of Stieglitz's photographs as well as those of Edward Steichen , Frank Eugene , Joseph Keiley , and Gertrude Kasebier , among others. Camera Work, which

4209-785: Was basically static through the Middle Ages in Europe—although in the Arabic and Oriental world, it proceeded at a much brisker pace. From the 13th century, the work of Aristotle was adapted rather rigidly into Christian philosophy , particularly by Thomas Aquinas , forming the basis for natural theology . During the Renaissance, scholars (herbalists and humanists, particularly) returned to direct observation of plants and animals for natural history, and many began to accumulate large collections of exotic specimens and unusual monsters . Leonhart Fuchs

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4278-503: Was founded in 1902, continued publication until 1917 and, in the words of Stieglitz's biographer, Caffin was "the only major critic sympathetic to [Stieglitz's] goals to last the full life of the magazine." The relationship with Stieglitz also led to more exposure to new art. Reviewing exhibitions at Stieglitz's gallery, "291," Caffin had the opportunity to assess challenging artists as different as Abraham Walkowitz , Alfred Maurer , John Marin , Arthur Dove , and Marsden Hartley . Some of

4347-754: Was learning. At age 18, he relocated to Brooklyn , New York , to study painting at the Brooklyn Art School and the National Academy of Design . studying under Lemuel Wilmarth . He met many emerging and progressive artists during this period in New York, including his future wife, Kate Bloede and his close friend, Daniel Chester French . He showed work at the newly formed Society of American Artists , and continued refining his skills as an animal and landscape painter. In 1875, after having married Kate Bloede, he moved to Paris, where he studied for four years at

4416-402: Was made by parson-naturalists such as Gilbert White , William Kirby , John George Wood , and John Ray , who wrote about plants, animals, and other aspects of nature. Many of these men wrote about nature to make the natural theology argument for the existence or goodness of God. Since early modern times, however, a great number of women made contributions to natural history, particularly in

4485-505: Was often described in first-person accounts as eccentric and mercurial, and there is a parallel contradictory mixture of academic tradition, spontaneity and improvisation in his artistic methods. For example, he is largely known as a painter of "ideal figures", in which he portrayed women as embodiments of virtue, adorned in flowing white tunics and equipped with feathered angel's wings. At the same time, he did this using methods that were surprisingly unorthodox, such as purposely mixing dirt into

4554-405: Was one of the three founding fathers of botany, along with Otto Brunfels and Hieronymus Bock . Other important contributors to the field were Valerius Cordus , Konrad Gesner ( Historiae animalium ), Frederik Ruysch , and Gaspard Bauhin . The rapid increase in the number of known organisms prompted many attempts at classifying and organizing species into taxonomic groups , culminating in

4623-439: Was resourceful in his teaching, which he saw as a useful, inseparable part of his own studio work. Among his devoted apprentices were Rockwell Kent , Louis Agassiz Fuertes , Richard Meryman, Barry Faulkner (Thayer's cousin), Alexander and William James (the sons of Harvard philosopher William James ), and Thayer's own son and daughter, Gerald and Gladys . He also had a profound influence on Dennis Miller Bunker , who, while not

4692-535: Was roundly mocked by Theodore Roosevelt and others for its assumption that all animal coloration is cryptic. Thayer also influenced American art through his efforts as a teacher, training apprentices in his New Hampshire studio. Thayer was born in Boston to William Henry Thayer and Ellen Handerson, members of the Thayer family . The son of a country doctor, he spent his childhood in rural New Hampshire, near Keene , at

4761-587: Was vigorously attacked for this in a long paper by Theodore Roosevelt . Thayer first became involved in military camouflage in 1898, during the Spanish–American War , when he and his friend George de Forest Brush proposed the use of protective coloration on American ships, using countershading. The two artists did obtain a patent for their idea in 1902, titled "Process of Treating the Outsides of Ships, etc., for Making Them Less Visible", in which their method

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