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Gustaf Kolthoff

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Gustaf Kolthoff ca. 1875.

Gustaf Isak Kolthoff (14 December 1845 – 25 October 1913) was a Swedish ornithologist, taxidermist and naturalist. He worked as a curator of the museum at Uppsala and set up a private museum where he is credited with the creation of the first naturalistic dioramas which became a popular format in European natural history museums.

Biography

Kolthoff was born at Sandhem, Västergötland, the son of Johan Henrik Kolthoff and his wife Sara Gustafva née Friberger. He became a curator of the zoological museum in the University of Uppsala in 1878. He joined other naturalists on collecting expeditions, to Greenland in 1883 with Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld and in 1898 to the Norwegian Arctic coast with Alfred Gabriel Nathorst. He established a museum in Djurgården, Stockholm in 1893 along with Bruno Liljefors (who painted the backgrounds) and Carl Bovallius. Here he made dioramas depicting the Swedish coast, a boreal forest and other habitats. The use of dioramas in natural history museums spread to other parts of Europe and the US subsequently. He received an honorary doctorate in 1907 from the University of Uppsala.

Kolthoff married Beata Charlotte Lovisa née Lind in 1870. Their son Kjell Kolthoff also became a wildlife artist and conservationist.

Cape Kolthoff in Greenland (73°43.3 ́N 24°02.0 ́W) at the entrance of Moskusoksefjord was named by A.G. Nathorst after Kolthoff.

References

  1. Kamcke, Claudia; Hutterer, Rainer (2015), Tunnicliffe, Sue Dale; Scheersoi, Annette (eds.), "History of Dioramas" (PDF), Natural History Dioramas, Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, pp. 7–21, doi:10.1007/978-94-017-9496-1_2, ISBN 978-94-017-9495-4, S2CID 194125688, retrieved 2022-12-31
  2. White, Paul S. (1997). "Review of Habitat Dioramas: Illusions of Wilderness in Museums of Natural History". The British Journal for the History of Science. 30 (2): 243–245. ISSN 0007-0874. JSTOR 4027726.
  3. Butler, Barbara H. (1993). "Nineteenth-Century Museums in the Twenty-First Century: Can They Be Taken Seriously?". Curator: The Museum Journal. 36 (1): 9–12. doi:10.1111/j.2151-6952.1993.tb00772.x.
  4. Wonders, Karen (1992). "Sweden's Biological Museums". Curator: The Museum Journal. 35 (3): 190–205. doi:10.1111/j.2151-6952.1992.tb00754.x.
  5. Kemp, Martin (1998). "Akeley's Africa". Nature. 395 (6704): 753. doi:10.1038/27347. ISSN 0028-0836. S2CID 27542038.
  6. ^ Theodor Westrin, ed. (1911). "Kolthoff, Gustaf Isak". Nordisk familjebok konversationslexikon och realencyklopedi. Kikarsikte–Kroman. Nordisk familjeboks förlag. Vol. 14 (2 ed.). Stockholm. pp. 611–612.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  7. Higgins, Anthony K. (2010). Exploration history and place names of northern East Greenland. Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland Bulletin 21. Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland. p. 219. ISBN 978-87-7871-292-9.

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