Sometimes we have to accept that one of our artworks is flying the Luce coop. It is always sad, but we resolve to keep a stiff upper lip, pick ourselves up off our immaculately restored nineteenth-century marble floor, and choose a replacement. (Actually, that part is quite fun.) This blog is a chance to highlight one the works that is due to leave the Luce Center in the coming months. So come and see it while you still can!
In January, Abbott Handerson Thayer’s Male Wood Duck in a Forest Pool is going out on loan to be included in an exhibition at the Yale Center for British Art. "But wait just a minute!," I hear you cry. "Don’t you have eight other paintings from Thayer’s Concealing Coloration in the Animal Kingdom?" Yes, indeed we do, but why let that get in the way of sharing a good story? Especially when the ingredients of the story include controversy, elaborate theories, famous people, a bitter argument, and of course, wonderful painting!
In 1909 Thayer and his son Gerald published a book titled Concealing Coloration in the Animal Kingdom, offering their theory of animal camouflage. Thayer believed that the coloration of animals, no matter how eye-catching, was meant to disguise them in nature through what he called "countershading." Thayer painted some of the paintings in the Luce Center to illustrate how the darker colors of an animal were neutralized by the light of the sun and the light part of an animal was neutralized by the darkness of the shadows, thus making the animal seem invisible at crucial moments.
Not everyone was convinced, however. Theodore Roosevelt took particular exception and wrote a 112-page rebuttal to Thayer’s "ludicrous" theory. Thayer wanted to meet and discuss his theory face-to-face, but Roosevelt always refused, saying somewhat mockingly, "There is no earthly use for any honest seeker after truth to visit your laboratory, as you call it, until you are willing to face the certain elementary facts." For his part, Thayer stated his opinion that his book presented "not so much theories, but revelations." They disagreed to the end.
Was Thayer the father of camouflage? Or was Teddy Roosevelt correct to ridicule his theory? Come to the Luce Center and visit Case 8b to make up your own mind.
