Gerhard Heilmann’s Obituary (1946)

Gerhard Heilman, 25 June 1859 – 26 March 1946

By Finn Salomonsen

From: Dansk Ornithologisk Forenings Tidsskrift 40, 1946, pp. 146-9.

The well-known painter and writer Gerhard Heilmann has died on March 26 of this year at the high age of 87. The birds and their lives were favourite motifs of the artist Heilman, and he has also made significant contributions to the scientific study of ornithology.

Gerhard Heilman used to call himself Heilmann, but gained permission in 1942 to spell his name with one n; he was born on June 25, 1859, in Skelskør as the son of the pharmacist H.P.G. Heilmann and his wife, b. Mau. He enrolled as a student in Roskilde in 1877, and initially studied at the polytechnic college. Later, he studied medicine. During his studies, he became aware of his artistic skills, after which the wish to become a professional artist became so strong that he left his studies and, contrary to the wishes of his family, became educated as a painter as a pupil (1883) of Krøyer and Schwartz. Already in 1887 he has his first exhibition at Charlottenborg. In the period from 1890-1902 he was a regular painter in the Royal Porcelain Works [Kgl. Porcellænsfabrik], but this did not satisfy him, and during the rest of his life he worked as a free artist, painting, illustrating books, and writing books himself. It should also be mentioned that he drew the Danish bank notes that were in use until recently.

As an artist, Gerhard Heilman belonged to the naturalist school of the Eighties. His images are clearly shaped by his tutors, and are therefore currently regarded as strictly traditional. Nonetheless, they have a very personal appeal due to Heilman’s sensitive view, and his highly developed decorative sense. Even when this sometimes seduced him to working in an empty, decorative style, which has aged swiftly. To an ornithologist, his canvases are nevertheless of particular merit and beauty, because the birds are so often their subjects. He possessed great knowledge of the appearance and anatomy of the birds, and was simultaneously able to portray them in a landscape, thereby creating complete harmony. His stroke were soft and certain, and although his birds do not possess the vitality and freshness of those of Johannes Larsensk, they nevertheless reveal Heilman’s sharp eye for the essential in the appearance and posture of the birds, his unusual eye for detail, and his strong plastic skills. Connected with his naturalist tutors, all this made him into the born ornithological illustrator, on the same level as H. Grønhold, our internationally known bird iconograph. As an ornithological illustrator, Heilmann experienced his greatest triumphs with the beautiful raptor plates in Schiøler’s Danmarks Fugle [Denmark's birds], but he drew more magnificent images for several books published by his long-standing friend A.L.V. Manniche. Among these are The Hunter in Nature [Jægeren in Naturen] (1925), Denmark’s songbirds [Danmarks Sangfugle] (1926), and the large three-volume work Denmark’s Birdlife [Danmarks Fugleliv] (1926-1930; second edition 1939), which he co-authored and which certainly contributed the most to making his name well-known as an illustrator and ornithologist. The Danish Ornithological Association is indebted to him for working out the design for the cover of the journal with the flying lapwings, the logo of the Association for forty years. Apart from his main work Vor nuværende Viden om Fuglenes Afstamning [Our present knowledge about the origin of birds], which appeared in parts in the volumes 7-10, 1913-16, Heilmann has written very rarely, and mainly in short articles, in the Journal of the Danish Ornithological Association [DOFT].

In a somewhat edited form, this work was published in English under the title The Origin of Birds, and received much attention. In this great work, Heilman collected our knowledge about the origin of birds, and pointed out among which extinct group of reptiles the ancestors of birds should be sought. His deductions are founded upon a unique anatomical knowledge, the basis for which was doubtless lain during his medicine studies. The book, which is remarkable because of its exceptionally thorough and careful exposition, contains a richness of new, often very original, thoughts. The numerous illustrations bear witness to the fortunate combination of the scientist and the artist. This work has been used proliferately by zoologists and palaeontologists, and even in the most recent foreign manuals his views are discussed and his figures reproduced. With this single book, his name was established among colleagues over the world. In this country, however, he did not receive the appreciation he deserved because of narrow-minded envy in certain academic circles, a fact that fostered great bitterness in Heilman. Several years ago, he published his second great work, The Universe and Tradition [Universet og Traditionen] (1940), a large-scale popular scientific work about the origin of the earth and animal life; a work that bore testimony to an achievement of a scale that was incomprehensible for someone of his age, and which was an excellent manual for these all-encompassing subjects, even though some of its hypotheses belong to a lost time.

Heilman was a significant artist and a prominent man of learning, although his work only bore fruit once in the form of the valuable book: Origin of Birds [Fuglenes Oprindelse]. It is curious that he, who was virtually self-taught, was able to master a variety of disciplines within biology, demonstrating the strong spiritual powers by which he was inhabited.

Heilman was a controversial man, who without a doubt sought and found controversy himself. However, he gained the fortunate fate of the free artist and scientist, and he sensed that he had a rich life behind him. His work on the origin of birds and his most beautiful bird drawings will always keep his name alive.

I am indebted to Prof. Carl Mar: Møller for supplying information about Gerhard Heilman’s youth, and for his permission to display this photograph.

Many thanks to Carel Horstmeier for helping with the translation, IN