Taxidermy: Display of Illusion

"The career of Lewis Lindsay Dyche provides us with an example of one of the more dramatic ironies in the evolution of modern natural history exploration. To the casual reader of that history, there may appear to be an unfathomable contradiction between the objectives of the gatherer of animal specimens for taxidermic display and the ideals of wildlife conservation…In an age denied the more benign instruction of film and television cameras into a natural habitat, it remained for biologists to preserve species samples in museum panoramas approximating various environments."

---Robert S. Hoffman, Assistant Secretary for Research, Smithsonian Institution, foreword to The Dashing Kansas, Lewis Lindsay Dyche: The Amazing Adventures of a Nineteenth-Century Naturalist and Explorer, ed. Bill Sharp and Peggy Sullivan (Kansas City, MO: Harrow Books, 1990) xi.

Today theory and laboratory work dominate the natural sciences, but in the nineteenth-century collecting and categorizing specimens were essential to the study of the natural world. Taxidermy allowed for the preservation and display of animal specimens. The nineteenth-century brought successive waves of European immigrants and their taxidermy skills to North America. The new continent offered exciting inspiration for naturalist and artists. Taxidermists in The United States focused more on game trophies and were more constrained by wildlife conservation legislation than their European counterparts, where the demand focused more on taxidermy as fashionable home decoration. The United States swiftly assumed leadership in taxidermy practices due to innovative techniques in mounting large mammals and the development of new museum displays.

Nineteenth-century museums displayed species in orderly rows for comparative studies in response to a need to create, categorize and inventory. However, as the focus for inquiry shifted more towards the behavior and ecology of species, the idea of displaying mounted animals in groups portraying their everyday actions in their native habitat caught on.  As the display of habitat groups (*see definition below) became larger and more elaborate, the concept evolved into the great dioramas of the major Unites States museums. These dioramas combined taxidermy, art and ecological understanding, to create an illusion of spectacle and educational insight for the urban viewer. Creating a diorama was a multi-disciplinary task, particularly in linking the three-dimensional specimens and foreground to the two-dimensional painted background.

Dyche first attempted taxidermy in 1883, during his junior year at the University of Kansas, beginning with birds and onto larger mammals such as a grizzly bear. Dyche’s specimens became popular attractions and Professor Snow encouraged Dyche’s endeavors in taxidermy.

Among the most noteworthy specimens Dyche mounted during his career were two bison procured by Dyche’s colleague, William Harvey Brown. In 1886, Brown accompanied William Temple Hornaday, chief taxidermist for the National Museum in Washington, D.C. on an expedition to Montana to hunt bison in order to preserve a taxidermic record of the species with the realization that they were close to extinction. Hornaday felt that mounted bison could draw the attention of the urban viewer to the plight of the real bison. Brown returned to KU with a bison cow and bull. Dyche, the university taxidermist, had mounted large animals before, but the immense size and rarity of the bison left him intimidated. In January of 1887 Dyche left to study with Hornaday, then the nation’s leading taxidermist, in order to learn the latest advancements in mounting large mammals. Rather than simply stuffing an animal skin with hay, as was the common practice at the time, Hornaday developed a technique that utilized a clay-covered hollow statue, along with other finishing details, such as sculpting facial detail out of papier-maché. It is worth noting that to carry out Hornaday’s clay-covered statue method one had to possess the skills of a sculptor and in-depth knowledge of animal anatomy. Another development in the field of taxidermy employed by Hornaday was to display mounted animals in groups. Group exhibits at the time were considered too sensational for the scientific display of animals in university and museum collections. Dyche would return to Kansas with inventive practices in the mounting and display of large mammals. Upon his return, Dyche began his work mounting the bison bull Brown had secured for KU’s collection. The process would take nearly five months to complete. The last wild bison in the state of Kansas was seen in the fall of 1888, the same year Dyche completed the mounting of KU’s bison pair.

During this era, panoramic paintings of nature were very popular. By providing entrance into an idealized landscape, panoramas offered guests a new way of understanding the physical world. The aim was to reproduce the real world so skillfully and on such a grand scale that spectators could believe what they were seeing was genuine and providing them with an immersive powerful viewing experience.

The diorama as a mode of display reached its height of success in the mid-twentieth century before being sidelined by film, television, and digital means of conveying wildlife for museum visitors. Museums in the United States were not the only institutions to employ dioramas, but there is little doubt that major innovative techniques were developed in the US.