Elephant, 1909
Bronze
29 3/8 x 35 3/4 x 11 1/2 in
Biography
Born in Brooklyn in 1874, Knight enjoyed wildlife and the outdoors from an early age, especially fishing and hiking with his father. Knight developed an interest in animals and natural history. He frequently visited the Museum of Natural History. At the age of twelve, Knight began taking art classes at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, primarily working in watercolor, pencil, charcoal, crayon, and oil.
In 1890, Knight was hired as a professional artist by the firm J. & R. Lamb, a church-decorating firm, specializing in stained glass windows. Knight created cartoons of the plants and animals depicted in the stained glass windows. During this period, Knight realized the importance of drawing from a live subject and spent mornings sketching in the Central Park Zoo. Knight continued his study of animals and their anatomy at the American Museum of Natural History’s taxidermy department, where he dissected carcasses, studying the skeletal and muscular structures. Knight worked as an illustrator for McClure’s magazine, while continuing to become ensconced in the Museum of Natural History. A key figure in Knight’s career was paleontologist Henry Fairfield Osborn. Osborn created a team, which included Knight, for his newly developed department in the museum, the Department of Vertebrate Paleontology. His mission was to publicly display fossils in exhibits of lifelike poses. At this time, fossils were kept out of public view. The most popular exhibits were those accompanied by Knight’s watercolors.
In 1907-08, Knight sculpted life-sized heads of two African elephants, a full-scale tapir, a rhinoceros, and in 1911, the façade of the Zebra House for the Bronx Zoo. From 1901 through 1911, Knight continued to create paintings for the museum as well as the U.S. Fish Commission and the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries.
J.P. Morgan financed Knight to create watercolors and sculpture restorations for the museum. The copies were available for purchase, while the originals were donated to the museum. Morgan also sponsored Knight to create a mural series for the American Museum’s Hall of the Age of Man, which was completed in 1923.
Dr. George Kunz, renowned Tiffany gemologist, helped secure a contract for Knight to create a series of 28 murals for the fossil hall of the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. The project began in 1926 and ended in 1930.
After completing the Field Museum murals, Knight returned to the American Museum and painted four murals to commemorate his fortieth anniversary at the museum. The next year he painted a mural for Hayden planetarium depicting Blackfoot Indians’ story of the Moon Goddess.
From 1944-46, Knight produced a series of 24 small paintings representing different forms of life through a succession of genealogical ages, which sold to the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. His last mural was painted in 1951 for the Everhart Museum in Scranton, Pennsylvania.
In November 1982, Gordon R. Allen, Class of 1943, approached the Princetoniana Committee in his capacity as attorney for the Methodist Church. The church had been given land, known as the Jay Estate outside Rye, New York, as part of the Estate of Walter B. (class of 1933) and Zilph Palmer Devereux.
The church donated the Princeton Tiger to the University, which is installed in the Jadwin Gymnasium and also known as the Devereux Tiger. Zilph Palmer was the daughter of Edgar Palmer, Class of 1903. The Princeton Tiger was a cast from the mold of the statue in Palmer Square.
