Date of Birth: 1866
Place of Birth: Portsmouth, New Hampshire
Date of Death: April 7, 1928
Burial location: San Gabriel Cemetery, Alhambra, California
John Stewart Rowley was born in 1866 in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, the son of a ship‑carpenter, William Rowley and schoolteacher Helen (Stewart) Rowley. Fascinated by animals and field sports, he began collecting specimens as a teenager. After brief instruction from a local cabinetmaker, Rowley taught himself taxidermy from William T. Hornaday’s Manual of Practical Taxidermy (1877) and by studying mounts in East‑Coast museums. In 1885 he took an apprenticeship with Ward’s Natural Science Establishment in Rochester, New York—then the country’s premier commercial supplier of zoological specimens. Under Henry A. Ward and chief taxidermist Frederick S. Webster, Rowley learned casting, papier‑mâché modeling, and bulk shipping of large mammals. While at Ward’s he mastered skin preparation, sculpture, and mold‑making, which emphasized anatomical accuracy through cast body parts and clay modeling.
In 1891 Rowley accepted a position at the Colorado State Museum in Denver. Over the next decade he made extensive collecting trips into the Rockies, Yellowstone, and the Southwest, preparing mammals and birds for newly formed state and university museums. Rowley’s mounts were notable for their crisp anatomy and dramatic poses—qualities that soon attracted the attention of major institutions back east.
In 1898, Rowley wrote a book on taxidermy that more than a century later is still something of a bible in the field, The Art of Taxidermy. Rowley argued that taxidermy uses the same methods as used in the fine arts of sculpture and painting and that taxidermy should no longer be considered a trade, but an art. The stunning meticulous attention to the smallest details in recreating natural scenes certainly qualified Rowley as an artist. Some of the dioramas he and his team built even took an entire year to create!
In 1889 the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) he museum hired Rowley, just as they were creating an exhibit on bison. Rowley and other staff from the museum traveled to Oklahoma where they presumably shot the bison and sent them back to New York to be mounted. He quickly proved to be a talented taxidermist with an amazing eye for detail and a talent for preserving animal hides. The bison became extremely popular, drawing large crowds.
His boss died suddenly and Rowley took over the taxidermy department of the AMNH. Rowley and his team proved prolific. Some of his standout work from this time was a central moose group depicting a second-growth forest in New Brunswick with twenty-two thousand artificial leaves. Rowley’s team created an elk and Virginia deer display that were both described in the 1904 General Guide to the Museum as examples of extremely lifelike modeling. Other examples of North American mammals that featured during Rowley’s tenure were: an otter, wildcat, lynx, opossum, raccoon, and red and grey foxes. Rowley, in addition to the mammals, supplied bird mounts for Frank Chapman in the North American Bird Hall.
Some of the new innovations that Rowley developed were using lightweight papier‑mâché and burlap “mannequins,” replacing the heavier plaster shells then in use; perfecting the “freeze-frame” predator–prey tableau, as seen in the celebrated Timber Wolf, Elk, and Mule‑Deer Groups (1905–07); and introducing silk and wax botanical models for foreground vegetation, pushing realism beyond previous exhibits.
Rowley’s engineering skill was also invaluable in supporting large mammals—particularly the Alaskan moose and musk‑ox groups—on concealed steel armatures that could be disassembled for cleaning or relocation.
According to several sources, Rowley was involved in preserving one of the most famous animals ever in American history. P.T. Barnum caused a furor and made a fortune by bringing Jumbo the elephant to America. The huge mammal toured the country until he was killed in an accident. Barnum gave the carcass to the New York museum where Rowley and his team mounted it.
By 1903, Rowley moved to California lured by higher pay to assist in building Stanford University’s biological museum and later take a position at the California Academy of Sciences. Many of his New York dioramas lasted a half-century before they were replaced in the 1940s. Many of them ended up in Yale’s Peabody Museum where they can still be seen today. After Rowley’s departure to San Francisco, his Chief Taxidermist vacancy was filled by Carl Akeley.
Rowley was married to illustrator Alice Mabel Heath in 1902. She painted many of the lichens and background plants used in his dioramas. His hobbies included competitive rowing on the Harlem River and amateur astronomy (he built his own 6‑inch reflector telescope). Colleagues recall him as a soft‑spoken perfectionist who kept pocket notebooks of animal proportions and field colors.
In 1915 Rowley won international distinction by his work in mounting the animal exhibits in the various buildings of the Panama-Pacific Exposition. He was awarded a gold medal for the excellence of his settings and perfect methods of preserving the natural appearance of specimens.
In addition to his tenure as Chief Taxidermist at AMNH, Rowley was the curator of mammals and chief of exhibits at the California Academy of Sciences, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco (1909-1917); director of the Oakland Museum (1917-1920); and chief of exhibits at the Los Angeles County Museum (1920-1927).
After Akeley’s death in 1926. Rowley was invited to Washington, DC, to supervise refurbishment of the Smithsonian’s aging mammal halls. From 1919 until his death he alternated between the National Museum and freelance projects for smaller regional institutions—among them the Milwaukee Public Museum and the Royal Ontario Museum. His molds for pronghorn, bighorn sheep, and white‑tailed deer became industry standards and were also distributed through supply houses.
John Stewart Rowley died of heart failure on April 7, 1928 at age 62 while consulting on the Hall of North American Birds at Philadelphia’s Academy of Natural Sciences. He was buried in San Gabriel Cemetery in Alhambra, California.
Though overshadowed in popular memory by Akeley, Rowley’s blend of engineering ingenuity, artistic sensitivity, and dedication to public education places him among the seminal figures who transformed taxidermy into true museum art.
