The Scientific Vision of Women

As a very excitable nature lover, art collector and scuba diver for the last twenty-five years, I was drawn to this scientific illustrator for her adventurous and artful contributions to the scientific community in a world when female contributions to science were few.

In the 1930s, two women brought undersea creatures to life in a way that no one had before. Only a lucky few could ever personally observe the never-before-seen deep sea realm and the fantastic creatures that live there. These women by their dedication to science made it possible to share these discoveries with the world.

Else Bostelmann and Gloria Hollister worked as a team to chronicle the findings of bathysphere diver William Beebe. Hollister would listen over a telephone cable and summarize descriptions of sea life from the incredibly small and cramped diving bell, never knowing if a silence on the other end was really a pause in communication or the end of Beebe and his submersible. Back in her lab in Bermuda, Bostelmann would paint and draw the creatures from the deep.

Hollister had also set a record for deep dives with Beebe. With her degree in zoology from Columbia, was an expert on dissections of fish and preserving and staining. On the occasion that a live specimen could be brought up, the team would work with great speed to capture the fading iridescence and vibrant colors that inevitably faded before their eyes. The work took place on Nonsuch Island in Bermuda at the Department of Tropical Research Lab. These amazing illustrations are a tribute to the intense quest for knowledge and desire to bring an otherwise unseen world to light.

Bostelmann’s work remains in permanent collections at the Bermuda Art Museum, the National Geographic collection, the Wildlife Conservation Society Archives and in Beebe’s personal collection.

Label by Laura Grunert