Ken Van Wagner

As 2022 ended and a new year began, I began to reflect upon the things that have been my sources of imagination and inspiration. It was not too difficult to acknowledge what inspires me today, but I realized so much of it was based upon things that touched my soul as a child and teenager that I had (almost) forgotten their original sources.

As a writer and artist, books played an important role in establishing my love of both, but there is one genre that combined both artistic aesthetics with scientific knowledge that was    probably the biggest influence in my life – paleoart. 

Now I say that with a caveat – I was, and still am a little picky about what works and doesn’t work for me when it comes to this specialized genre. Having grown up in the latter part of the 20th Century, I was lucky enough to find myself caught up in what would be known as the “Dinosaur Renaissance,” which continues to this day. However, I admit it was the pre-Renaissance artwork that engaged me as a child, so I look back with fond nostalgia on the works of the artists and filmmakers who opened my mind to the strange worlds and fantastic creatures of the past.

Get ready for a trip WAY down Memory Lane!

When I was seven years old in 1969, I was out at the Shop Rite grocery store when a strange coloring book caught my eye:

It was, of course a promotional item for the latest film produced by that Master of Model Manipulation, Ray Harryhausen.  At that time, the name of Ray Harryhausen meant nothing to me, though I’m sure I’d already seen his previous films on the small screen. (i.e. a 20 inch black and white television) Regardless, the dominating image of that mighty mythical Allosaurus-Tyrannosaurus hybrid (Ray confided in me as such when I asked him years later as well as confirming this in later interviews!) is what immediately grabbed me by my tender pre-teen nads and has never let go since. Dinosaurs with a capital D have never left my imagination in the fifty-plus years since that fateful day in Shop Rite. 

I immediately cajoled my poor mother to let me see this wondrous work on the big screen after I had finished coloring my way through the Forbidden Valley and its prehistoric denizens. I was enthralled, though I was initially disappointed that as the star of the film Gwangi was not in the Godzilla-esque dimensions that the poster exaggerated him to be. Nevertheless, it began an obsession, not only with dinosaurs, but all prehistory. 

What makes classic paleoart so compelling to me was exemplified by the Gwangi poster – a vision of a past life-form that actually existed – yet romanticized to a larger than life vision of a lost world.

This holds true even when the purpose of the art was not to sensationalize an upcoming theater release of a monster movie. Even “serious” paleoart that was commissioned for museums and books often relied on a healthy dose of imagination of the artists, though the best ones managed to convey a naturalistic vision even while imbuing a sense of drama. This holds true even today, when our knowledge of dinosaurs in particular underwent an exponential expansion.

When it comes to classic paleoart, three names inevitably come up, as their works were probably imitated by contemporaries more than any others – Charles R. Knight, Zdeněk Burian, and Rudolph Zallinger.  I’m not going to elaborate extensively about these gifted men, you can easily search on the internet for their bios and examples of their work. Ray Harryhausen himself cited Charles Knight as one of his inspirations when rendering his own three dimensional depictions of prehistoric animals.

What I AM going to do though, is showcase their works that have stood out for me – in particular their evolving vision of that most famous of dinosaurs, Tyrannosaurus rex.

As Knight was probably the earliest artist to have rendered a life portrait of the tyrant king in all his glorious prehistoric majesty let’s start with one of his most famous early paintings:

Tyrannosaurus and Triceratops family – circa 1919 courtesy of the American Museum of Natural  History

Of course, this century-old image of both dinosaurs is seriously outdated, but it established a precedent that has lasted to this day – the two most famous antagonists in prehistory are shown together for the first time in a life portrait. Whether you root for Tyrannosaurus or Triceratops, this confrontation has fascinated the scientific and public consciousness like no other.

Personally, I rank this painting as one of my favorites, in spite of the inaccuracies for several reasons.  Although the head of this T.rex is more iguana-like in shape, with the eyes and ear placed too far forward compared to the actual skull, the massive powerful neck is remarkably accurate for the time as the cervical vertebrae of T.rex are known to have unusually robust neural spines. The posture of this tyrannosaur, although still showing the typical theropod “tripod” stance, does have the back more horizontal than even the famous skeletal mount in the American Museum it was based upon, while the tail is held off the ground. Also, from a purely aesthetic point of view, this Tyrannosaurus is one of the only ones portrayed pre-Dino Renaissance that is not showing off his impressive teeth. He may be on the prowl, but this king isn’t wasting his time roaring at his prey; a more natural yet still formidable predator.

This example of Knight’s work was also an obvious influence on a T.rex that sparred with a most unlikely opponent:

King Kong may have come out of this scrap on top, but his opponent was hardly the “sluggish reptilian imbecile” that had come to be the popular image of dinosaurs at the time the film was made. Willis O’Brien and Ray Harryhausen always animated their dinosaurs as active alert creatures, even if their appearances weren’t scientifically accurate. Interestingly, the diminutive forelimbs of this tyrannosaur were facing “palm inward” which is the modern accepted position for almost all theropod dinosaurs today!

Roughly ten years after his painting for the American Museum in NY, Knight was commissioned by the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago for a series of large gallery portraits that still adorn the museum’s halls. He revisited his earlier theme of Tyrannosaurus vs Triceratops, this one perhaps considered the most iconic of his paleo art:

Triceratops and Tyrannosaurus – circa 1927 courtesy Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago.

Here there is no mistaking the dramatic confrontation between predator and prey, although if I were the tyrannosaur, I wouldn’t be striding head-on into a pair of javelins! This is again one of my favorites, as the Triceratops in particular seems to be striking the pose of the mounted skeleton in the American Museum of Natural History in NY, providing a more anatomically accurate depiction of the three-horned beast! Also worthy of praise is the pose of the attacking T.rex, with the horizontal posture and tail properly held off the ground-hardly a shuffling cold-blooded reptile. Also interesting is the inclusion of the second T.rex in the background facing in the same direction – implying perhaps this was a hunting pair? If so, Triceratops was in trouble!

Oddly, after painting what many considered the high-water mark of Knight’s career, his later portrayals of Tyrannosaurus veered away from being fairly accurate to downright cartoonish in some aspects. Check out this pair of T.rex from 1940:

The animal in the back looks positively jaunty with his high-stepping style. The Maastrichtian version of the Ministry of Silly Walks! Also, apparently neither T.rex has been doing much power walking, as their poor thighs and calves have been reduced to lizard-like proportions.  Why Knight’s naturalistic style changed to this near-caricature probably had much to do with the scientific attitudes of the later 1930s through the early 1960s that denigrated dinosaurs as evolutionary failures not worthy of “serious” study as were mammals; hominids in particular. Even Charles Knight himself tended to refer to dinosaurs as “unadaptable and unprogressive.”  Nevertheless, he still imbued his art with an active style showing the tyrant king as ready to scrap, even with his own species!

The next piece of artwork was for an article in Natural Geographic magazine that was published in 1942:

Here the cowering T.rex of the previous drawing has apparently had enough of his rival doing his showgirl struts and decides to respond with biting commentary; actually one of the few pieces of Knight’s work to show actual contact between adversaries. Again however, the once burly neck of 1919’s T.rex has been reduced to just enough flesh to hold up their heads, while their thighs display as much muscle definition as a dead frog’s. And what is up with that tail that should have stopped just a couple of feet after that first bend in the road? On the plus side, this is one of the few pre-Renaissance paintings of T.rex that has the head (of the biter) rendered at an angle that correctly represented how broad the rear of Tyrannosaurus’s skull was, and hinted at binocular vision.

Finally, here is one of Knight’s Tyrannosaurus paintings from 1944, less than ten years before he passed away in 1953:

Here Tyrannosaurus has regained some of the dignity that was lost after 1927; the tripod stance is typical of the time, but the tail is shorted to a reasonable length again and not quite dragging on the ground; this T.rex is apparently just starting its day as the rising sun highlights the towering head while the remainder of the body is still in shadow. It seems to be almost contemplative, rather than aggressive. 

Charles R. Knight truly was a pioneer in the field of paleoart; his works have inspired  paleontologists for generations, while paleo artists have admired (and often imitated) his iconic style even during his own lifetime. The best of them have paid homage, while others only proved that imitation is not always the best form of flattery.

Next up: a paleo artist who really had to take the long road, on the other side of the Iron Curtain no less; Zdenek Burian