Abbott Handerson Thayer
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Abbott Handerson Thayer was an American painter, naturalist, and teacher. As a painter of portraits, figures, animals, and landscapes, he enjoyed a certain prominence during his lifetime, and his pain
Thayer c. 1890
A Virgin (1892–93), painted allusion to Winged Victory of Samothrace
Monadnock in Winter, 1904, oil on canvas
Angel, 1887, oil on canvas. Smithsonian American Art Museum
Countershading
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Countershading, or Thayer's law, is a method of camouflage in which an animal's coloration is darker on the top or upper side and lighter on the underside of the body. This pattern is found in many sp
Abbott Handerson Thayer
…markings, about masquerade, as when a butterfly mimics a leaf (though here he was anticipated by Bates, Wallace, and Poulton), and especially about countershading. Beginning in 1892, he wrote about the function of countershading in nature, by which forms appear less round and less solid through inverted shading…
Many animals, such as this grey reef shark, are countershaded.
Illustration from the artist Abbot Thayer's 1909 book on camouflage of a Luna caterpillar Actias luna a) in position b) inverted.
Thayer's 1902 patent application. He failed to convince the US Navy.
Thayer's "White fowl, lacking counter-shading, against a flat white cloth."