Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins
Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins (born February 8, 1807 , † January 27, 1894 in London ) was an English sculptor , illustrator and scientist . His sculptures made dinosaurs a cultural mass phenomenon and shaped their image in the 19th century. He was one of the most popular illustrators for natural history books of his time.
Dinosaurs in Sydenham
On the initiative of Prince Albert , Queen Victoria's husband , life-size sculptures of dinosaurs have been placed in the park of the Crystal Palace . On the one hand, this should teach the masses. On the other hand, it was important to show the world public in an impressive way the great, prehistoric history of Great Britain. In collaboration with Richard Owen , the leading paleontologist at the time , Hawkins created 33 monumental figures that were inaugurated in 1854. This oldest plastic representation of the dinosaurs does not correspond to the current state of science. Today it is known that the dinosaurs are more closely related to the crocodiles and birds than to the mammals and that many dinosaurs moved on two legs ( bipedes ). The representation chosen by Hawkins is explained by the context of the history of science . According to Owen's view (doctrine of archetypes) the dinosaurs were mammal-like animals and Hawkins was a follower of Cuvier's theory of types . Accordingly, there must have been large carnivorous and herbivorous land creatures of the lizard type - just as there are currently of the mammalian type. That is why Hawkins reconstructed them as large mammals with reptile scales .
The representation of dinosaurs by Owen and Hawkins turned against the early evolutionary theories and opposed the ascending Scala Naturae by populating a long past epoch of the earth's age with supposedly more highly developed lizard species than are currently available.
Hawkins' sculptures became one of the most famous sensations in Victorian England . They survived to this day, were restored for £ 4,000,000 and officially re-inaugurated in 2002 by Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh .
Dinosaurs in New York
In 1868 Hawkins traveled to the United States. Here were also fossils have been found of dinosaurs. For the American Museum of Natural History in New York, he was to build an installation with prehistoric animals comparable to the London scenery. However, this project fell victim to political squabbles. His workshops with sculptures in progress are being destroyed by radicals.
Hawkins assembles numerous skeletons of dinosaurs at the Smithsonian Institution and Princeton University , or artificially completed them. In April 1879 he returned to England where he died in 1894.
further reading
- Valerie Bramwell: All in the Bones: A Biography of Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins . Academy of Natural Sciences 2008. ISBN 0-910006-65-2
- Frank Patalong: The First of Their Kind - The Victorian Dinosaurs of Crystal Palace, London , BOD 2015. ISBN 3-7347-9900-7
Web links
- Paleontology and Politics. Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins and his New York City Paleozoic Museum by David Goldman. Revised article from Prehistoric Times Magazine , December / January 2003 issue
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Hawkins, Benjamin Waterhouse |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | English sculptor, illustrator and scientist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | February 8, 1807 |
| DATE OF DEATH | January 27, 1894 |
| Place of death | London |