NEW HAVEN, CT.- “Endless forms”: Charles Darwin, Natural Science and the Visual Arts is arranged in a sequence of seven thematic sections. Together they highlight the signifi cance of visual traditions for Darwin, and the often surprising ways in which Darwin’s revolutionary theories inspired artists in the later nineteenth century. The exhibition brings together a fascinating range of paintings, drawings, watercolors, prints, photographs, and sculptures from major museums and galleries in Europe and America. Some of the paintings are by renowned artists including J.M.W. Turner, Frederic Edwin Church, and the French Impressionists. Other spectacular works by lesserknown artists such as Bruno Liljefors and Félicien Rops will be a revelation. Fine art will be seen in juxtaposition with scientific material, from geological maps and botanical teaching diagrams to fossils, minerals, and ornithological specimens, revealing the many interactions between natural science and art during this period.

Darwin’s Eye
Darwin’s Eye shows the traditions of natural history and illustration that influenced the young Charles Darwin, and the visual stimuli he drew from the fine arts, including the collections at the Fitzwilliam Museum. Objects on display in the exhibition will stress the highly visual nature of Darwin’s own research as an observational scientist and his passionate interest in all facets of the natural world. These include books that belonged to Darwin and specimens he collected, together with botanical drawings by his mentor, John Henslow, and his close friend, Joseph Hooker, as well as a group of exhibits relating to Darwin’s epic five-year voyage on H.M.S. Beagle.

The History of the Earth
The History of the Earth features grand landscapes and scenes of prehistory inspired by new research in geology and paleontology, subjects in which Darwin was himself immersed. As scientists became convinced that the earth was far older than the Bible suggested, artists responded with imaginative visions of the natural forces that had been at work over millions of years. The existing view that dated the origin of the world to Noah’s flood was still present in works by the painters Thomas Cole and J.M.W. Turner, but a new vision soon emerged that focused attention on the dynamic natural forces of erosion through water, glaciers, and volcanic eruptions, which had gradually shaped and reshaped the earth’s crust. William Dyce’s Pegwell Bay, a Recollection of October 5th 1858 (ca. 1858–60), John Brett’s stunning Glacier of Rosenlaui (1856) and Thomas Moran’s dazzling watercolors of geysers in the Yellowstone region (1872-73) are key examples of how artists began to refocus their attention in light of revelatory scientific discoveries.

The Struggle for Existence
The Struggle for Existence refl ects Darwin’s vision of the ruthless confl ict among species that led to “natural selection,” or “the survival of the fittest.” John James Audubon’s scenes of violent action in the bird world, and the brutal, melancholy animal paintings of Sir Edwin Landseer, including his monumental scene of dying stags, Morning (1853), were works Darwin knew and played into his own vision of life in the wild. Gradually, Darwin’s new emphasis on the marvelous interplay between all living things came to dominate artists’ approach to nature. Bruno Liljefors and Abbott Thayer were both fascinated by his understanding of the complex ecology of the natural world, such as how color and pattern help to disguise and protect animals. But what Darwin called “the war of nature” also played itself out in the human arena. In many Victorian photographs and prints, and in paintings like Hubert von Herkomer’s On Strike (1891), man too—particularly the “weak members” of modern society—had to face the competitive rigors of his environment.

Animal Kin
Animal Kin presents the other side of the coin: the implications of evolution on our view of the psychology of other species. Had the human mind, as well as the body, evolved from those of animals? Do we share emotions such as love, anger, and sadness, and even the “finer feelings” with them? This section centers on the illustrations for Darwin’s book, Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872), and shows how his ideas about the way animals thought and felt were intimately bound up with those of popular painters of dogs and other creatures, such as Sir Edwin Landseer and Briton Riviere. Images of apes and monkeys reveal the dilemma arising from Darwin’s ideas: sometimes our simian ancestors were depicted in ways that showed their kinship with man (Landseer, Hugo Rheinhold); at other times they were demonized as monsters, such as the brutal shadows of humankind (Emmanuel Frémiet).

The Descent of Humankind
The Descent of Humankind examines artistic responses to the theory of human evolution—from an ape-like ancestor to modern man—with which Darwin was so closely identifi ed in the public mind. The anxieties provoked by these ideas are played out in the dark, sometimes fantastic, views of human prehistory by artists as diverse as G. F. Watts and Odilon Redon. In an age of imperialism, the concept of human cultural development from an animal state was inseparable from racial theory. Increasingly, the public became fascinated with the “Other.” Photography played a crucial role in disseminating imagery of “savage” and tribal peoples, their cultures, and customs. This section includes an astonishing range of photographs of racial “types,” some from Darwin’s own collection, which demonstrate the constant fl ow of images and ideas between the world of anthropologists and that of commercial entertainment.

Darwin, Beauty, and Sexual Selection
Darwin, Beauty, and Sexual Selection highlights Darwin’s notions of beauty in nature, in particular as it relates to courtship displays among animals. The focus is on birds, which Darwin believed to be the “most aesthetic” creatures after man. Telling juxtapositions between paintings by James Tissot, Frederick Sandys, and D.G. Rossetti, and feathered fashion accessories, caricatures, and brilliantly colored ornithological specimens, illuminate the parallels that Darwin himself drew between the display of beautiful, sexually-alluring features by birds and by man (or, more commonly, woman). Female mate choice was one of the most controversial and disturbing aspects of Darwin’s theory of sexual selection. The exhibition reveals that, despite his own conventional views on the position of women in society, Darwin was thought to have contributed to the emergence of a dangerously liberated “new woman,” here forcefully evoked in a works by the Belgian painter and printmaker, Félicien Rops.

Darwin and Impressionism
Darwin and Impressionism presents a radical interpretation of the impact of Darwin’s theories on some of the greatest artists of the nineteenth century. The Impressionists had numerous friends in the scientifi c world, many of them keen Darwinians. Degas’ vision of contemporary Parisian society is considered in the light of his knowledge of Darwinian theory. This adds a new dimension to iconic works, such as his Little Dancer Aged Fourteen, which was described as ugly and even bestial when fi rst exhibited in 1881. Landscapes and seascapes by Monet show how, in the 1880s, he searched out the primeval qualities of nature in geological formations that had been shaped by centuries of erosion and volcanic activity. Cézanne’s relationship with his native Provence is reconsidered in the light of his friendship with one of France’s leading Darwinists, the paleontologist Antoine-Fortuné Marion. This group of major paintings, drawings, prints and sculpture provides a spectacular and thought-provoking conclusion to the exhibition.