Around 1967 Charley accepted one last major commission from Western Publishing – illustrating Gerald Fichter’s The Animal Kingdom.²

The 105-page book, a middle-school level introduction to zoology, allowed Charley to concentrate his efforts solely on animals. His hundreds of gouache paintings covered everything from single-celled organisms to insects to reptiles to fish to mammals. Pretty much, as the title would imply, the entire animal kingdom. It was in many ways an even more ambitious project than the Golden Book of Biology.

Defensive devices of lizards

To support Fichter’s text, Charley illustrated, among other things, sharks vs. stingrays, or squids vs. whales, or tarantulas vs. hummingbirds – exactly the stuff that would appeal to a pre-teen target audience. Charley’s minimalist point-of-view on the brutality of the wild was nothing short of masterful and the result was a now hard-to-find classic

“Battles between the squid and the sperm whale are awesome sights”

“A black mamba escaping a brush fire has been caught by a patrolling secretary bird”

Detail, Original gouache. Chris Glass

“A hummingbird becomes a tarantula’s victim”

The Coral reef

Although Charley would continue with limited commercial freelance work throughout the 1970s and 80s, notably for the Ford Times, the Sohioan, Ranger Rick and Procter and Gamble’s Moonbeams, he would never again accept another commission on the scale of The Animal Kingdom.

Charley had spent 20 years creating a body of work so vast that a catalogue raisonné is simply impossible to compile and, now approaching 50 yo, it was clear that he needed to slow down. Perhaps more importantly, by this time much of his commercial illustration, especially his book-length nature work, was rapidly being replaced by photography. Charley and Edie’s response was to reinvent themselves by returning to their artistic roots – the serigraph. It was precisely at this time they met the revolutionary Wood Hannah.

“[The] African goliath beetle is one of the heaviest of insects”

1. Unless noted, all of the images shown here are courtesy of Terry Wright at charleyharperprints.com.

2. Fichter, George. The Animal Kingdom – an Introduction to the Major Groups of Animals. New York: Golden Press, 1968 (WorldCat). The book went through two printings and is available with two covers, one with black text and one with red text:

Here is Charley’s alternate study for the cover:

Unless otherwise noted all images are copyright 2013 Estate of Charley Harper and are used here by permission.

10 Dec 2010, updated 31 Jul 2015 ‧ Illustration

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