I'm finally finishing framing Bill's paintings for the show that opens at the Laboratory of Ornithology Thursday. Bill is William C Dilger, Cornell Professor Emeritus and my dearest friend. The oldest of the paintings here, is the barred owl he did in 1942 when he was nineteen.I've finished framing seventeen paintings. I've made horrible compromises on nearly all of them. But they look good. I can't scan larger than 11x14. So I made mock-ups of the deer (bottom right), the screech owl (top right) and the bittern as place holders in the layout which will actually be two rows about 16 feet long each. When we talked about the layout today we decided to add two of the mouse paintings and another field sketch.
I especially like the field sketches Bill did when he was in the Army. The cardinal was done in Washington D.C in 1944 and the Myna bird in India in 1945. Field sketches always include information about the specimen and where it was collected. The Myna bird is labeled "Collected by S/SGT Louis Van Guelpin. Area #1." They weren't allowed to say where they were. Bill says when he corresponded with Dr Allen he made a point of mentioning animals with narrowly overlapping ranges, thus letting Dr Allen know where he was.
2 comments:
I'd love to see these paintings larger, what an incredible collection of art. Thanks for sharing these Mary Ann.
A customer of mine from NY living here in NM gifted me with a painting of an ivory billed woodpecker that Dilger did in 1950. It is signed to South & Sally Hoyt. When I looked Dilger's name up online, I was surprised to find he was a distinguished ornithologist (we had our own distinguished ornithologist here in Silver City at WNMU who also illustrated birds - Dale Zimmerman). If anyone might like the painting I have in my possession, I would consider parting with it. Jay Scott
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