Scientist of the Day - Robert Ridgway

Swatches of various blues with names, detail of plate 9, A Nomenclature of Colors for Naturalists, by Robert Ridgway, 1886 (Linda Hall Library)

Robert Ridgway, an American ornithologist, was born July 2, 1850, in Mount Carmel, Illinois.  He began drawing birds at an early age.  At the age of 13, he sent some of his artwork to the U.S. Patent Office, of all places, but it eventually came to the attention of Spencer Baird, the most eminent ornithologist in the United States, and assistant secretary at the new Smithsonian Institution.   Baird was impressed, a correspondence ensued, and Baird recommended Ridgway's appointment as naturalist on Clarence King’s western survey of the 40th parallel, 1867-73.   When Baird became Secretary (i.e., Director) of the Smithsonian Institution in 1878, he appointed Ridgway Curator of Birds, a position he held for the rest of his life.

Portrait of Robert Ridgway, clipping of printed photograph, 1873, Smithsonian Institution achives (siarchives.si.edu)

Title page, A Nomenclature of Colors for Naturalists, by Robert Ridgway, 1886 (Linda Hall Library)

Ridgway’s contributions to American ornithology were prodigious, but today, we are going to look at a side interest: his attempts to establish color standards for zoologists. When someone says a junco is “slate gray,” the adjective is useless unless it is tied to some standard. The Englishman Patrick Syme had published the first set of color standards for naturalists in 1814, and Darwin had taken a second edition of that book with him on the Beagle voyage, and had used Syme’s nomenclature when he described birds. But by the 1880s, the hand-colored swatches in Syme’s book had deteriorated and were no longer useable.

Swatches of gray with names, plate 9 entire, A Nomenclature of Colors for Naturalists, by Robert Ridgway, 1886 (Linda Hall Library)

Swatches of various browns with names, plate 4 entire, A Nomenclature of Colors for Naturalists, by Robert Ridgway, 1886 (Linda Hall Library)

So Ridgway, in 1886, published A Nomenclature of Colors for Naturalists. Surprisingly, since he knew the shortcomings of Syme’s book, Ridgway also used hand-stenciled samples to exemplify his standard colors.  His book had 10 plates of colors, one showing blues, another greens, another reds, etc.  He also included a charming set of 7 outlines of birds or bird parts, ready for coloring.  There were 186 color swatches in all.

One of 7 outlines of birds or bird parts as a coloring guide,  A Nomenclature of Colors for Naturalists, by Robert Ridgway, plate 11, 1886 (Linda Hall Library

Ridgway came to regret the use of hand-coloring, as well as the small number of samples, and he set out to produce a revised guide to colors that overcame the problems of the first one.  It took him 26 years to accomplish this.  His Color Standards and Color Nomenclature came out in 1912, and it contained 5 times as many plates, 53 in all, and a total of 1115 small color rectangles, each one assigned a color name.

Title page, Color Standards and Color Nomenclature, by Robert Ridgway, 1912 (Linda Hall Library)

Swatches of various greens with names, plate 19 entire, Color Standards and Color Nomenclature, by Robert Ridgway, 1912 (Linda Hall Library)

The rectangles for each color—enough for 5000 copies—were painted on large sheets in one batch from a carefully mixed color, and then cut apart and mounted, 27 per leaf, on heavy stock. The samples (except for the yellows) have stood up very well over time. All of the plates or details shown here are from copies of the two editions in our collections.

Swatches of various yellows with names, detail of plate 4, Color Standards and Color Nomenclature, by Robert Ridgway, 1912 (Linda Hall Library)

Swatches of various grays with names, detail of plate 50, Color Standards and Color Nomenclature, by Robert Ridgway, 1912 (Linda Hall Library)

Ridgway's two color treatises, fascinating though they are, were subsidiary to his primary project, describing and revising the nomenclature for the birds of North America. He completed 8 parts of The Birds of North and Middle America (1901-1919) before his death in 1929, and three more were published in the 1940s, all 11 parts as Bulletins of the US National Museum, which means they are in our government documents collection. The Smithsonian Institution also has hundreds of his original drawings in their archives, many available online.  So a future post on Ridgway's bird work would certainly seem to be in order.  Perhaps we can persuade Eric Ward, our resident Ridgway expert (and VP for Public Programming) to write that post.

William B. Ashworth, Jr., Consultant for the History of Science, Linda Hall Library and Associate Professor emeritus, Department of History, University of Missouri-Kansas City. Comments or corrections are welcome; please direct to ashworthw@umkc.edu.