Museums : Exhibit Features Works by Noted Dinosaur Artist

Born in Brooklyn in 1874, Charles R. Knight spent much of his boyhood at a New York City zoo sketching animals. That grew into a lifelong quest for knowledge about the prehistoric creatures that inhabited the Earth millions of years ago.

By the turn of the century, with people flocking to see his paintings in the paleontology halls of New York’s American Museum of Natural History, Knight had sparked great interest in prehistory and established himself as the most popular interpreter of prehistoric life.

A collection of the artist’s work--more than 100 paintings and sculptures--goes on display today at the Natural History Museum in Exposition Park in an exhibit called “Dinosaurs, Mammoths and Cavemen.”

Unlike artists whose fantasy creatures illustrate science-fiction novels and are imaginary images of mind, pen and brush, Knight’s work was the result of meticulous research and his lifelong association with scientists at the American Museum. During the 1940s, National Geographic magazine used Knight’s paintings to illustrate a popular series of articles about life through the ages. Although Knight died in 1953, his paintings of dinosaurs still set the standard for depictions of these most imagination-provoking of all prehistoric creatures.

Knight was equally talented modeling with clay. Before painting a prehistoric tableau, he would first sculpt models of his subjects: dinosaurs, mammals and early man. Placed in sunlight, they enabled Knight to create paintings with natural lighting that revealed the dimensional form of his subjects.

Included in the Los Angeles exhibit of Knight’s work is a solitary bronze figure of early man. Knight sculpted his interpretation of Neanderthal Man based on studies of fossils that were first discovered in the Neander Gorge near Dusseldorf, Germany in 1856. Studying the small figure of a hunter, whose primitive spear is poised to hurl at a quarry, one can only wonder how he survived in such a hostile environment. Other tableaux in the Natural History Museum exhibit show a caveman sketching scenes on a cave wall, two dinosaurs locked in a life-and-death struggle and a woolly mammoth plowing through the snowdrifts of an Ice Age blizzard.

The exhibit, which is composed of collections from the American Museum and the National Geographic, will be at the Natural History Museum until April 26, 1987. The museum is located at 900 Exposition Blvd., one block east of Vermont Avenue. Open Tuesday through Sunday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Closed Mondays. Admission is $1.50 for adults, 75 cents for children 5-17 and seniors. Children under five free. Parking is available at a lot off Menlo Avenue for 50 cents. There’s a cafeteria on the ground floor. Phone (213) 744-3414.