The beautiful letterpress card 'Due South,' depicts birds journeying to warmer climates. It is a captivating scene of flight over bare trees and a tranquil marshland. The work of the artist Francis Lee Jaques inspired this card.
Francis Lee Jaques (1887–1969) was a renowned American wildlife artist best known for his scientifically accurate and evocative paintings of natural habitats and dioramas. Born in Geneseo, Illinois, and raised in Minnesota, Jaques was largely self-taught, developing his artistic skills while working as a taxidermist, railroad fireman, and outdoorsman. His profound familiarity with nature, especially birds and wildfowl, informed the realism and vitality of his artwork.
Francis Lee Jacques became well known for his majestic diorama backgrounds, which he painted as a staff artist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City during the 1940s and 1950s. His eighty dioramas helped shape the perception of city-goers and those unfamiliar with what natural life would have looked like for specific birds. Despite several extensive renovations at the American Museum of Natural History since the 1950s, miraculously, his dioramas can still be seen at the museum today. You can find his work in the Hall of Birds of the World and, most notably, the Whitney Memorial Hall of Pacific Oceanic Bird Life. In 1954, he completed his final background painting for the museum, which depicted Glacier Park.
For those who wish to see more of his work, his collection is housed at the Jaques Art Center in Aitkin, Minnesota. Jaques was a lifelong resident of Aitkin from 1887 and the center is dedicated to exhibiting his art.
Jacques is remembered as a master artist whose work combined scientific accuracy with a deep appreciation for the natural world. I have fond memories of traipsing through the magnificent Hall of Birds at the Museum of Natural History on a school trip in the 1980s. It is nice to know that something I saw as a child can now be honored as a Saturn Press card.
- Deirdre Keogh-Anderson