Scientist of the Day - Charley Harper
Puffin, serigraph by Charley Harper, 1971 (ohiomagazine.imgix.net)
Charles Burton Harper, an American artist, died June 10, 2007, at the age of 84. He was born on Aug. 4, 1922, on the family farm in West Virginia. Nearly always referred to as Charley Harper, he developed his unique artistic talents at the Art Academy of Cincinnati, and worked out of that city his entire life. Since Harper drew animals and scenes from nature almost exclusively, he would seem to be as qualified for Scientist-of-the-Day status as Andrew Jackson Grayson or Margaret Mee, to name just a few of the nature painters that we have included in this series. What makes Harper different is that he was a minimalist, which is not usually the approach that makes for useful field guides, where extreme realism is more the norm. Our first image, a Charley Harper puffin from 1971, gives you an idea of what a minimalist nature painting looks like.
Photo portrait of Charley Harper, holding his well-known drawing of a cardinal and a corncob (charleyharperprints.com)
Harper was probably surprised when he was asked to illustrate the Giant Golden Book of Biology, published in 1961. I doubt if any grade-school biology textbook ever had a cover that looked like this (third image), or plates like the following images inside, showing the desert at night, a nautilus feeding, and a graphically ingenious representation of the food-chain. I cannot remember a single textbook I used in my El-Hi education, but I like to think that, had I been taught biology from the Giant Golden Book, I would remember it fondly.
Front cover, by Charley Harper, for The Giant Golden Book of Biology, by Gerald Ames and Rose Wyler, 1961 (charleyharperprints.com)
A nautilus, illustration by Charley Harper, for The Giant Golden Book of Biology, by Gerald Ames and Rose Wyler, 1961 (charleyharperprints.com)
Harper's unique style caught the eye of many advertising executives, and he did lots of commercial illustrations, which we pass over here, but he also did posters for such worthy environmental groups as the National Park Service and various zoos and sanctuaries in his home state of Ohio, such as the Cincinnati Nature Center.
Night in the desert, illustration by Charley Harper, for The Giant Golden Book of Biology, by Gerald Ames and Rose Wyler, 1961 (charleyharperprints.com)
Food chain, illustration by Charley Harper, for The Giant Golden Book of Biology, by Gerald Ames and Rose Wyler, 1961 (charleyharperprints.com)
If you like your animal art in pieces, you are in luck. The Pomegranate Company offers at least 25 jigsaw puzzles featuring Harper paintings. I own three of them, and not only are they pleasing to look when they are done, they are well-crafted puzzles and fun to assemble. We show the “Secret Sanctuary” as a puzzle (seventh image), and link to the index page for all of Pomegranate’s Charley Harper items, puzzles as well as notecards and such.
Jigsaw puzzle, “Secret Sanctuary”, Charley Harper, Pomegranate Puzzles (https://www.pomegranate.com)
I taught an online course in the Great Covid Year of 2020 on the evolution of scientific graphics, and I discussed a graph from the Giant Golden Book that had caught my eye, illustrating the fact that, among animals, oxygen consumption per gram is inversely proportional to the square root of the animal’s body mass, or, if we dispense with formulas, that very big animals use oxygen slowly, and tiny animals use oxygen voraciously. A reviewer called this the best semi-log table ever, and I would not disagree. It belonged in Edward Tufte’s Visual Display of Quantitative Information (1983) or one of his other books on information graphics, but I don’t think that it ever came to Tufte’s attention. If it had, I am sure he would have included it, enthusiastically.
Graphic by Charley Harper, comparing oxygen consumption per gram to the square root of an animal’s body mass, for The Giant Golden Book of Biology, by Gerald Ames and Rose Wyler, 1961 (charleyharperprints.com)
If you would like to acquire your own copy of the Giant Golden Book of Biology (or the second edition of 1967, with the word “Giant” omitted from the title), you are out of luck. The book is a victim of what I call ABE price inflation, where someone lists a book at a high price (perhaps for a good reason) on a used book marketplace (such as ABE), and another seller, usually with a greatly inferior copy, sees the high asking price and prices their copy similarly, as does the next, and the next. Since the copies never sell, because they are overpriced, the stock just grows and grows, until now there are a dozen copies of Giant Golden Book listed for sale, in the $200-500 range, and they just sit there. The price inflation has spilled over into eBay (where there are another dozen copies listed, with high minimum bids). You would think some astute soul would realize why they are not selling, and offer their copy for $50-75, which would probably sell immediately (to me, for example). I would think 75 real dollars would be preferable to 200 virtual dollars. But what do I know – I just buy books. I never sell them.
William B. Ashworth, Jr., Consultant for the History of Science, Linda Hall Library and Associate Professor emeritus, Department of History, University of Missouri-Kansas City. Comments or corrections are welcome; please direct to ashworthw@umkc.edu.
