Helen Damrosch Tea Van

Helen Therese Damrosch Tee-Van (born May 26, 1893 in Manhattan , New York City , New York , † July 29, 1976 in Danbury , Connecticut ) was an American animal painter , landscape painter , natural history illustrator and non-fiction author.

Life

Helen Damrosch Tee-Van was the daughter of Frank Heino and Henrietta Hetty Damrosch, née Mosenthal, and the niece of the composer and conductor Walter Damrosch . Her father was the founder of the Institute of Musical Art at the Juilliard School of Music in New York City and, together with his sister Clara, a music educator at the Veltin School for Girls in Manhattan, where Helen Damrosch was initially a student. In 1909 she left the Veltin School, but continued her artistic training. She studied with George de Forest Brush , completed an anatomy course with a group of art students at Columbia University's Medical School and was a member of Jonas Lies Memory Sketch Club for several years . From 1918 to 1919 she worked as an occupational therapist in the United States Army .

Damrosch Tee-Van was an artist involved in thirteen expeditions of the Tropical Research Department of the New York Zoological Society to South America and the Caribbean , led by William Beebe . In 1922 and 1924 she toured British Guiana . From July 1923 until his death in 1967, she was married to John Tee-Van , an ichthyologist and then general manager of the Bronx Zoo and New York Aquarium . She took part in Beebe's Arcturus Oceanographic expeditions to the Galapagos Islands in 1925 and to Haiti in 1927 , where she made underwater sketches in pencil on zinc plates while wearing a heavy glass diving helmet at a depth of about 18 m. From 1929 to 1933 she was a member of the Bermuda Oceanographic Expeditions. Damrosch Tee-Van graduated from the New York School of Display in 1937 .

In 1938 and 1939 she designed murals for the Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield , Massachusetts , as well as 1941–1942 for the New York Aquarium and in 1949 for the Children's Zoo of the Bronx Zoo. For the New York World's Fair in 1939/1940 she created the background for exhibitions in the New York Zoological Society building. Between 1943 and 1947 she made 16 educational dioramas for the United Service to China (formerly United China Relief). She also designed textiles.

In 1946 Damrosch Tee-Van took part in an expedition to the Rancho Grande National Park (since 1953 the Henri Pittier National Park ) in Venezuela . In 1956, 1960 and 1963 she was a guest artist at William Beebe's Simla estate in Trinidad . Further trips took her to Canada , Australia and Europe .

Damrosch Tee-Van was also active as an illustrator of books and articles with a focus on natural history. She created color tables for the 14th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica and for Collier's Weekly Encyclopaedia and produced illustrations for many scientific journals. In 1926 she wrote and illustrated her first work, Red Howling Monkey . The Trees Around Us appeared in 1960, Insects Are Where You Find Them in 1963 and Small Animals Are Where You Find Them in 1966 .

She also illustrated works by other authors, including A Birthday Greeting and Other Songs by Emily Niles Huyck and Frank Damrosch (1918), Creative Music in the Home by Satis N. Coleman (1927), Reluctant Farmer by Elswyth Thane (1950), Mosquitoes in the Big Ditch by Roger Burlingame (1952), Reptiles Round the World by Clifford H. Pope (1957), Sea Monsters by William H. Knowlton (1959), The Story of the Platypus by Alfred G. Milotte (1959), Imported Insects by Naomi Talley (1961), The Story of the Hippopotamus by Alfred G. Milotte (1964) and The Story of an Alaskan Grizzly by Alfred G. Milotte and Elma Milotte (1969).

Her landscape and underwater paintings as well as silk designs have been exhibited in numerous galleries and museums, including the National Academy of Design and the American Museum of Natural History , the Buffalo Museum of Science , the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art .

Damrosch Tee-Van was a member of the Society of Animal Artists , the Society of Woman Geographers (including from 1945 to 1948 Vice President and Chairwoman of the New York branch), the New York Zoological Society, the China Institute and the Cosmopolitan Club .

Damrosch Tee-Van died in a Danbury, Connecticut hospital in late July 1976. She was buried in her home town of Sherman , Connecticut.

literature

• Story of Life from the Time of It's Inception Through Man To Be Told on Museum's Walls. In: The Berkshire Eagle, Pittsfield, Massachusetts, May 14, 1938, p. 2, retrieved from newspapers.com on October 8, 2019.
• The Jacques Cattell Press (Ed.): Who's Who in American Art - A Biographical Directory. Xerox Education Companies, New York / London 1973, ISBN 0-8352-0611-4 , p. 726.
• Helen D. Tee-Van, Artist and Writer On Science, Dies. In: The New York Times , July 31, 1976.
• Obituaries and Funerals: Helen Tee-Van designed murals for Museum. In: The Berkshire Eagle (Pittsfield, Massachusetts), Aug 2, 1976, p. 15, accessed from newspapers.com on October 8, 2019.
• Helen Damrosch Tea Van. Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2001. Gale In Context: Biography, accessed October 8, 2019.

Web links

• Library of Congress: Damrosch - Tee Van collection
• Find a Grave: Helen Theresa Damrosch Tea Van
• Helen Damrosch Tee-Van papers, 1900–1969
• Literature by and about Helen Damrosch Tee-Van in the bibliographic database WorldCat