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Helen Damrosch Tee-Van (American, 1893–1976) was an artist, illustrator and author with a specialty in scientific subjects. Born in New York City, she studied at the Veltin School until dropping out in 1909. She continued her art education in an unconventional manner: choosing to study with painters George de Forest Brush and Jonas Lie, and attending anatomy classes at the Columbia Medical School with a group of artists. [1]
Most famously, Helen Tee-Van was an artist on thirteen expeditions with the Tropical Research Department under the direction of its founder, William Beebe. As part of the New York Zoological Society (now the Wildlife Conservation Society), Beebe, an ornithologist by training, made the Tropical Research Department a household name, sending regular dispatches to the American press about the discoveries and adventures of each expedition. As one of the first celebrity scientists, Beebe was a skilled promoter of the group’s ventures in the Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea and South America, and he received plenty of nationwide attention. Some of Beebe’s activities are viewed in a less favorable light today, especially his acceptance of funding from corporate concerns seeking unfettered access to areas rich in natural resources. [2]
In 1922, Tee-Van traveled with the Department to British Guiana, now Guyana, where the Tropical Research Station was set up. She returned to Guyana the following year after her marriage to John Tee-Van, who was the general director of the Bronx Zoo and New York Aquarium. It was during her 1925 trip on the Arcturus Oceanographic Expedition to the Sargasso Sea that she made her famous sketches of insects, fish and other ocean life that silk manufacturer H.R. Mallinson & Company later transformed into fashionable fabrics. In 1927, Tee-Van’s design for a printed velvet with flying fish for H.R. Mallinson proved so popular that “it was impossible to find a yard of it in the retail shops to which it was distributed.” [3] A sample of that same velvet is in the collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (27.151.10).
For another well-publicized trip made by the Tropical Research Department, Tee-Van traveled to Haiti with artists Frederick E. Church (American, 1876–1975) and Vladimir Perfielieff (Russian, active USA, 1895–1943). Using small boats filled with diving equipment, Tee-Van and others explored the various reefs and cays and sketched all forms of sea life. Her image appeared in newspapers around the country after she was photographed sixty feet underwater wearing a sixty-pound glass diving helmet as she sketched on zinc plates with lead pencils. In December 1927, Tee-Van, Church and Perfielieff had a group show at Ainslee Galleries featuring paintings made during their travels in Haiti. [4] It was during another Department trip to Bermuda in 1929 that she made one of her most famous drawings of a giant squid. [5] Tee-Van continued to provide her services to other expeditions and traveled and explored the world well into the 1960s.
With a solid background of scientific and artistic training, Tee-Van worked consistently throughout her lifetime, and even returned to school, graduating from New York School of Display in 1937. She provided sixteen educational dioramas for the United Service to China, painted murals for the Berkshire Museum and the Bronx Park Zoo and worked with the New York Zoological Society to produce exhibition murals for the 1939-40 World’s Fair. She also contributed color plates for both the Encyclopedia Britannica and Collier's Weekly Encyclopedia. Later in her career, Tee-Van authored and illustrated several children’s books such as Insects Are Where You Find Them (1963), and Small Animals Are Where You Find Them (1966). Her illustrations also appeared in several other children’s books such as 1952’s Mosquitoes in the Big Ditch by Roger Burlingame, and The Story of the Hippopotamus, by Alfred G. Milotte in 1964. [6]
Many of Helen D. Tee-Van's papers and original drawings are held in the Special Collections and University Archives at the University of Oregon Libraries, Eugene, Oregon.
[1] https://researchworks.oclc.org/archivegrid/data/123091961
[2] Joanna Klein, “They Mixed Science, Art and Costume Parties to Reveal Mysteries of the Sea,” New York Times, March 27, 2017, accessed on Sept. 24, 2020; https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/27/science/william-beebe-department-of-tropical-research-illustrations.html
[3] “An Appreciated Art,” New York Times, Nov 27, 1927, E4.
[4] Advertisement: Ainslee Galleries, New York Times, Dec 4, 1927, N6.
[5] Joanna Klein, New York Times, March 27, 2017; accessed on Sept. 24, 2020.
[6] http://archiveswest.orbiscascade.org/ark:/80444/xv66364; accessed Oct. 13, 2020.
