About this work
What confronts you in this work is not a conventional portrait of a bird. Thayer's *Ostrich* study folder is a working object — part illustration, part argument — built from various media and collage on paperboard, as were the other study folders in this series, which measure approximately 12 by 9 inches closed. The ostrich, with its stark contrast of black body plumage (in the male) and white wing and tail feathers, is among nature's most visually arresting birds, and that is precisely the point. The book these studies fed into set out the controversial thesis that all animal coloration has the evolutionary purpose of camouflage — Thayer rejected Darwin's theory of sexual selection, arguing that even conspicuous animal features were effective as camouflage in the right light. Rendered with the layered, composite methods typical of the series, the image positions the bird against its environment to demonstrate how black, white, and grey dissolve into landscape when seen under the right conditions — the bold patterning functioning not as display but as what Thayer called "ruptive" coloration: disruptive coloration working to break up an object's outlines.
This folder dates to Thayer's most scientifically embattled period. In 1909, Abbott Handerson Thayer and his son Gerald published a controversial book titled *Concealing Coloration in the Animal Kingdom*, offering their theory of animal camouflage.
Thayer believed that the coloration of animals, no matter how eye-catching, was meant to disguise them in nature through what he called "countershading."
He believed that his professional training in color, value, and design, combined with observation of nature, gave him the tools to understand how animals disguise themselves from predators. The study folders — assembled rather than painted in the conventional sense — were the engine room of that argument: visual proofs prepared in Thayer's New Hampshire studio, accumulated over years, and marshalled into a book that would spark one of the era's most public scientific feuds. The most passionate criticism came from Teddy Roosevelt, who protested that Thayer's theory was ludicrous, arguing that on his trip to Africa he had spotted some of the animals Thayer mentioned from miles away. The ostrich — plainly visible to anyone on an African plain — was exactly the kind of case Thayer's critics seized on, making this study folder a small document of a large argument.
On the wall, this piece rewards a particular kind of viewer: one drawn to the place where science
