page_title: Charles R. Knight
section_title: Nationwide attention
hierarchical_section_title: Charles R. Knight / Nationwide attention
caption_attribution_description: Painting of Smilodon populator from the American Museum of Natural History.
context_page_description: Charles Robert Knight was an American artist famous for his paintings of dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals.
  His works were reproduced in many books, and are on display at several major museums in the United States.
context_section_description: Soon, natural history museums throughout the country began asking Knight for paintings as background for their own fossil exhibits. In 1925 Knight produced an elaborate mural for the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. This illustrated some of the birds and mammals whose remains had been found in the nearby La Brea Tar Pits.
  The following year, Knight began a 28-mural series for Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History, a project which showed the history of life on earth and took four years to complete. At the Field Museum, he produced one of his best-known pieces, a mural featuring Tyrannosaurus and Triceratops.  This confrontation scene between a predator and its prey would inspire many imitations, establishing the two dinosaurs as 'mortal enemies' in the popular consciousness.
  Knight’s work also found its way to the Carnegie Museums in Pittsburgh; the Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C.; and Yale's Peabody Museum of Natural History, among others. Several zoos, such as the Bronx Zoo, the Lincoln Park Zoo, and the Brookfield Zoo, also got Knight to paint murals of their living animals.
  Knight illustrated books and magazines, and became a frequent contributor to National Geographic.  He also wrote and illustrated several books of his own, such as Before the Dawn of History (Knight, 1935), Life Through the Ages (1946), Animal Drawing: Anatomy and Action for Artists (1947), and Prehistoric Man: The Great Adventure (1949). Additionally, Knight became a popular lecturer, describing prehistoric life to audiences across the country.
caption: Smilodon from 1905
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