Rudolph Zallinger
Rudolph Franz Zallinger (born November 12, 1919 in Irkutsk - † August 1, 1995 ) was an American painter who was known for wall paintings and illustrations, in particular The Age of Reptiles in the Peabody Museum of Natural History .
His father was an Austrian prisoner of war (and artist) in World War I in Siberia, his mother the daughter of a Polish civil engineer who worked for the Trans-Siberian Railway . They emigrated to Seattle with their not yet a year old son , where Zallinger grew up.
Zallinger studied at the Yale School of Fine Arts, where he specialized in illustration, and then taught at Yale. In 1942 he received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting (and in 1972 a Master of Fine Arts at Yale). In 1950 he moved back to Seattle.
The Age of Reptiles in the Peabody Museum (Great Hall) was for a time the world's largest mural (created in fresco technique) with a length of 34 m and a height of 4.9 m. It includes depictions of dinosaurs (such as Apatosaurus, Tyrannosaurus, Triceratops, Stegosaurus, Allosaurus, Ankylosaurus, Pteranodon, Archeopteryx) and other fossil creatures from the Devonian to the Cretaceous. Zallinger completed the painting in three years beginning in 1943 (and another year and a half of preparatory work and studies) in 1947. The work was initiated by the director of the Peabody Museum Albert E. Parr (who hired him to draw marine algae in 1942) and was scientifically accompanied and supervised by his successor (from 1942) Carl O. Dunbar . Zallinger completed a special course in paleontology and comparative anatomy by the museum's scientists (such as Richard Swann Lull ). In 1949 he received a Pulitzer Award in painting for it. The painting was on a US postage stamp in 1970. The age of Mammals at the Pulitzer Museum followed from 1961 to 1967 , sponsored by Life Magazine (and at Dunbar's request). After receiving a corresponding assignment from Life Magazine in 1952, he returned to Yale in 1953 for further studies (as a Fellow of Geology), but the funding for the mural did not come about until the 1960s. It has a length of 18.3 m. Zallinger was lifetime artist in residence at the Peabody Museum. But he mainly worked as a freelance artist for book illustrations and magazines.
He also created other illustrations for Life Magazine, for example. He painted fossil marine reptiles, other dinosaurs (illustrations for Dinosaurs , Golden Press 1960) the rainforest of Suriname, rituals of the Cro-Magnon people (The Dawn of Religion), animals and birds with his wife, the painter Jean Zallinger (Jean Day, they met as art students), about Minoan Crete and the Russian Revolution. He is also well-known for his illustration of the March of Progress on the evolution of man, starting with a prancing monkey and ending with Homo sapiens walking upright. She appeared in the Time-Life picture book Early Man of F. Clark Howell 1965. Paintings by him are in private collections in the collections of Yale University and the Seattle Art Museum.
In addition to Yale, he taught at the Hartford Art School at the University of Hartford at West Hartford and the Paier School of Art at Hamden.
In 1980 he received the Addison Emery Verrill Medal . In 1941 he received an honorable mention for the Prix de Rome. He was an honorary doctorate from the University of New Haven.
He had three children with Jean Zallinger.
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| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Zallinger, Rudolph |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Zallinger, Rudolph Franz |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American painter |
| DATE OF BIRTH | November 12, 1919 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Irkutsk |
| DATE OF DEATH | August 1, 1995 |