G. Biese, illustration accompanying Friedrich von Huene’s 1928 description of German saurischians (F. von Huene 1928, »Lebensbild des Saurischier-Vorkommen in Trossingen«, in: Palaeobiologica I, Table XI.)
Diplodocus carnegiei by Zdenek Burian (oil on canvas, 1969)
In the mid-1970s, when I was five or six years old, my mother bought a remarkably expensive book about past life for me, called Leven in de oertijd (published in English as Life before Man). Text was by Zdenek Spinar, but more importantly the illustrations were by the Czech artist Zdenek Burian (1905-1981) and were my first confrontations with all those wonderful animals of the past. It has to be said that Burian’s forte was in depicting Kenozoic animals and early humans, but the dinosaur illustrations and those of other animals of earlier times are very good, too. Burian’s inspiration by Charles Knight is obvious from many pictures, and his way of working with antagonists (T-Rex opposing a single Triceratops, that sort of thing) is similar too. But in all I find Burian’s paintings, with their hushed tones, more evocative. However, this is a judgment pickled in nostalgia, of course.
Burian himself was copied as well, of course. This Diplodocus from a “J. Smit” (the poster of which you may purchase at Allposters.com) seems to owe a great deal to the one above (I can’t be certain, since I haven’t been able to date this image). However, the graceful ways of Burian’s beast have disintegrated into a much ‘pudgier’ ensemble, which appears to have gorged itself. Moreover, its stance seems to represent some sort of compromise between the elephantine Diplodocus of Holland, and the reptile-like crawl advanced early in the 20th century by Hay and Tornier.
But more about that later.
