Few would debate that Ralph Wadsworth Graham was the most prolific in-house artist that the Brookfield Zoo ever had. But he was much more than an illustrative artist. As a gifted photographer, he also took images of many of the zoo’s animal residents, especially during births. And if that wasn’t enough, he also searched the world wide for animals to expand the zoo’s collection.
Graham was born in Cheyenne, Wy. on Oct. 22, 1901. When he grew into young manhood, he had been saving all his money in a Cheyenne bank to go to Chicago to study at the Art Institute of Chicago. But, according to Mrs. Ralph Graham in 1982, this bank “closed its doors” and he lost all his money.
Still determined, he came to Chicago and worked his way, for five years, through the School of the Art Institute, eventually specializing in oil painting. He graduated from here in 1930. When the Chicago’s Century of Progress World’s Fair opened in Chicago in 1933, his artwork was there to be seen and appreciated by many.
In 1935-36, Graham, acting as supervisor of applied arts under the Works Progress Administration, came to the zoo and oversaw the creation of tabletops for the refectory, featuring animal figures, set in the new medium of inlaid Formica. From 1936-39, his artwork was shown at the Art Institute.
Through 1939, he was also creating works for the Chicago Park District, the Shedd Aquarium, the Field Museum, Chicago Public Schools, the University of Illinois College of Medicine and Pharmacology, and his old alma mater, the Art Institute.
During World War II, Graham volunteered for the U.S. Army. While serving his country, he also produced many art projects for the military services. In 1945, the Brookfield Zoo asked if he would like to “join up” with them as a professional artist and photographer. He moved to Riverside, and was to remain with the zoo for the next 20 years, retiring at age 64 in 1965.
He must have been doing a great job here, right from the start. Three years later, in 1948, Director Robert Bean appointed Graham as assistant director. Several projects now claimed his attention. Perhaps the most interesting one occurred in 1948 when Graham traveled to India to obtain, among “tigers, and other mammals, birds and reptiles,” a pair of Great Indian Rhinoceroses for the zoo’s animal collection. It was to be an experience that Graham would never forget.
Graham was chosen for this trip in January 1948. He left for India on Feb. 18, and sent back reports to Director Bean upon his arrival in Kaziranga, where he immediately inspected the stockade intended to hold “the rhinos, if and when we catch them.”
He noted that the stockade was “in an ideal location, being in the jungle about 100 yards from the [Kaziranga Inspection] Bungalow.”
“Sahib Grahoom,” as he was being called, was enjoying himself immensely.
“I feel very selfish in having this wonderful adventure all to myself,” he wrote to Director Bean. “I try to soak up every sight and scene. My best to all. Ralph. P.S.-I forgot to mention that the dirty stream furnishes my drinking water.”
These letters, dated from Feb. 20, to May 23, 1948, turned out to be extremely unusual reports, written and illustrated so informally and conversationally that they were published in book form, by the Chicago Zoological Society, with photographs Graham had also taken.
The green covered, spiral-bound, 9-by-11-inch book cost $1, and sold well. What other dry, fact-filled report would ever bother to say that the Indian telephone system made the Senior Conservator of the Forests of Assam “sound like Donald Duck with a British accent?”
On Sunday, Feb. 29, 1948, at 6 a.m., “a little squirt came tearing into the compound yelling ‘Sahib, RHINO! RHINO! The elephant that I rode [to the rhinos], Sherkhan (King of the Tigers), a huge fellow 10 feet, 3 inches [high], trudged across the rice paddies, forded a small stream, and plunged into the tall grass of the sanctuary. The rhinos have worn a labyrinth of trails which they keep open by constant passage. It was on these trails that pits about four feet wide, twelve feet long, and six feet deep were dug and covered daily with fresh green grass.”
It was then that Graham obtained his first rhino, a male he named Kashi Ram, who had fallen into Pit No. 2.
Now he needed a female rhino. Two weeks later, on March 14, he got one.
“I’m so delighted over her capture, that I’m sillier than ever, but I’m burned up because I had to be in Calcutta [arranging payments] when she fell into the pit,” Graham wrote.
He named her Kamala, and decided that he had to get the rhinos out before the monsoon season set in. On April 18, measurements he was taking with marked bamboo at the stream near the Kazaringa Bungalow showed that the water level had already risen about three feet.
On April 12, there had been a drenching storm, with heavy rains for the rest of the week. Graham reported that “the average yearly rainfall at nearby Cherrapunji (about 100 miles from here) is 600 inches.”
Floodwaters were undermining the rhino stockade, and had to be diverted in a specially dug out channel.
On May 23, he wrote his final letter to Director Bean, while on board the S.S. Steel Surveyor, heading home.
“This trip has really been the most wonderful experience of my life,” he wrote. “I am more than grateful to you and to the Society, for making the trip possible, and more important, for having confidence in me to achieve the mission successfully. BROOKFIELD-Here we come, and will I be glad to see you! Ralph G.”
So Brookfield Zoo became the first zoo outside of India to have a pair of Great Indian Rhinos, in spite of having to deal with a 40-inch snake, “rain coming down like civet cats and mongooses” and an “overzealous bookkeeper.”
Graham later went on two other animal collecting trips, but this, his first, seemed to impress him the most.
His work as the ultimate zoo artist led to him draw two separate maps of the Brookfield Zoo, that he once said had sold about 5 million copies at 10 cents each. Nothing was too big for him to tackle, whether it was painting the refectory murals, showing North and South America and the animals that lived there; or too small, such as drawing animal illustrations for a humble matchbook cover. He also produced a set of six animal tiles that proved to be extremely popular.
In 1951, he photographed for and illustrated a 71-page children’s book simply titled “The Zoo,” which was written by Alberita M. Semrad. The photographs in the book were taken at Brookfield Zoo. Used copies of this book still sell on eBay, but they are so worn that it is obvious that they were much read and handled.
One doesn’t wonder, that with such a workload, and also acting as assistant zoo director, that he looked forward to painting for himself on his retirement in 1965. Two years previously, he had suffered a stroke that left him partially paralyzed, but he managed to cope with this. By the late 1970s he was still painting. However, by then he had only one usable eye.
Ralph Wadsworth Graham, who gave so much of his time and talent to the Brookfield Zoo, passed away on Oct. 8, 1980, in Berwyn, shortly before his 79th birthday. Even 27 years later, however, what remains of his great volume of work is still appreciated. This is why the name of Ralph Graham still endures.