As Bob Hines imbued his wildlife subjects with vitality in his artwork, John D. Juriga brings life to Hines’s remarkable talent and career in his captivating biography, Bob Hines: National Wildlife Artist. Hines, a gifted self-taught artist, found his calling during the darkness of the Great Depression, turning to art as a means of sharing the richness in nature’s beauty. His career brought him from designing the 1946 Federal Duck Stamp to joining the US Fish and Wildlife Service where he managed the competition for over thirty years, earning him the nickname of “Mr. Duck Stamp Contest.” His collaboration with Rachel Carson and other luminaries placed him on the cusp of the environmental movement in the United States. Celebrating the centennial of Hines’s birth, this richly illustrated volume will appeal to wildlife enthusiasts and Duck Stamp collectors alike, as well as those interested in the history of conservation in the United States.

About the Author

John D. Juriga, MD, is a practicing pediatrician in Upstate New York. While residing on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, he was guest curator for two major exhibits at the Ward Museum of Wildfowl Art in Salisbury: “Witness for Nature: The World of Rachel Carson” (1999), and “Bob Hines: National Wildlife Artist” (2003). In 2009, the Heritage Committee of the US Fish and Wildlife Service presented its Heritage Award to Dr. Juriga for his scholarship on Bob Hines. Dr. Juriga and his wife, Frances, live in the Southern Tier region of the state, surrounded by a variety of wildlife that Bob Hines would have appreciated.

What's Being Said

“Bob Hines was one of the best wildlife artists of the twentieth century. In elegant prose and with discerning compassion, John Juriga has rescued him from the obscurity of federal employment. . . . Hines’s public and private works deserve to stand on their own as noteworthy contributions to the incipient environmental movement. Juriga has revealed the man and his uncommon gifts. This book is an important treasure.”
—Linda Lear, author of Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature

“With skilled use of dialogue and a historian’s eye for the backdrop of events, Juriga shows the evolution of attitudes toward wildlife and toward professional writers and artists over fifty years. Just as Bob Hines’s drawings make the subject leap off the page, Juriga’s sketches of Bob Hines’s adventures capture his wit, his bold confidence, and his emotional pain.”
—Patricia M. DeMarco, PhD, director, Rachel Carson Institute

“Juriga has revealed an important pioneer in the twentieth-century environmental movement who use his art to illustrate both the beauty of nature and the threats it faced during a pivotal era in American history. The author’s passion for his subject, combined with Hines’s passion for wildlife, makes this book a must-read for anyone interested in America’s natural resources and their conservation.”
—Mark Madison, historian, US Fish and Wildlife Service

“It would have been a shame for the life of the late Bob Hines to have fallen through the cracks of conservation history. But John Juriga pursued the Hines trail and followed it into the complex, fascinating world of America’s one and only official wildlife sketcher and painter, capturing all in Bob Hines: National Wildlife Artist. . . . We would have missed so much.”
—Steve Pollick, retired outdoors editor, the Toledo Blade