Sherman Foote Denton

Sherman Foote Denton (24 September 1856 – 24 June 1937) was an American naturalist, illustrator, specimen collector, inventor, writer, and entrepreneur. Along with his brothers Shelley Wright and Robert Winsford he started Denton Brothers Butterflies Company which sold mounted butterfly specimens. Individual butterflies were mounted on plaster under a glass frame, a technique that he patented and known as "Denton mounts".

Life and work
Poster for William Denton's lectures made by Sherman, c. 1870
US Patent 681110A, 1901

Denton was born in Dayton, Ohio, the first son of Elizabeth M. née Foote (1826–1916) and William Denton (1823–1883) a geologist who became a promoter of psychic seeing abilities that he claimed his wife possessed in strong measure but one that existed in everyone.[1] The family interest in natural history was inculcated in the children early. Sherman and his brother Shelley travelled with their father who gave lectures around the world. William claimed that Sherman could draw the evolutionary history of birds through psychic abilities. Sherman participated in experiments by his father who claimed that rocks and other inanimate objects held a photographic record that sensitive people could see. Sherman drew several birds that he claimed to be able to see based on an examination of fossil tracks from Connecticut.[1] The senior Denton died from fever in 1883 while on a tour in Papua New Guinea. The two sons collected natural history specimens extensively on the three year tour. Sherman Denton returned home and then joined the US Fish Commission working as an artist who also worked on the collection and mounting of specimens. He developed a patented technique for life-like mounting and prior to preparing them, he would produce careful water-colour paintings. His careful illustrations were praised for their accuracy.[2] His illustrations included those of the now extinct Salvelinus agassizi under the name of "Canadian Red Trout".[3] A subspecies of cuckoo-shrike Lalage leucomela insulicola was described by W.E. Clyde Todd on the basis of specimens collected by the Denton brothers in the Carnegie Museum.[4] Sherman invented and patented, in 1901, the mounting of lepidopteran specimens on a white plaster tablet under glass instead of the traditional pinning. Along with his brother he sold numerous mounted specimens made by the Denton Brothers Company in Wellesley. He also produced numerous butterfly scale prints (also called lepidochromes[5]). The two volume book As Nature Shows Them (1900) produced in a limited 500 copies made use of actual butterfly and moth wing transfers for the coloured plates, with the body and legs hand painted.[6] Denton also took an interest in pearls, made a large collection of freshwater pearls, and published a book on pearls in 1916. His brother Shelley worked as a curator of the bird collections at Cambridge, Massachusetts, around 1887 and catalogued the collections of William Brewster (1851–1919).[7]

Denton died at his Wellesley Farm and was buried in Woodlawn cemetery. The street in Wellesley where the family lived was later renamed as Denton Road. Denton mounts of nearly 1400 specimens were gifted by their heirs to the Wellesley Historical Society. Vladimir Nabokov wrote about his own interest in butterflies and noted that his aunts would gift him "ridiculous presents such as Denton mounts of resplendent but really quite ordinary insects." In 1941, Nabokov made a visit to the collections held at 11, Denton Road and commented that they were "marvellous specimens, but with ... catastrophic labels and without localities."[8]

Some chromolithographs and lepidochromes
  • American lobster
    American lobster
  • Barred perch
    Barred perch
  • American saibling
    American saibling
  • The now extinct Salvelinus agassizi
    The now extinct Salvelinus agassizi
  • Lepidochrome (scale print) of the Polyphemus moth
    Lepidochrome (scale print) of the Polyphemus moth
  • "Psychic" rendering of an extinct bird drawn based on fossil tracks from Connecticut
    "Psychic" rendering of an extinct bird drawn based on fossil tracks from Connecticut

References
  1. Fallon, Richard (2022). "Seen through Deep Time: Occult Clairvoyance and Palaeoscientific Imagination". Journal of Victorian Culture. 20 (2): 143–162. doi:10.1093/jvcult/vcac069. ISSN 1355-5502.
  2. Steinhacker, Charles (1994). "The Fish Prints of S.F. Denton" (PDF). The American Fly Fisher. 20 (3): 10–13. Archived from the original (PDF) on 15 April 2003.
  3. Miller, Robert R.; Williams, James D.; Williams, Jack E. (1989). "Extinctions of North American Fishes During the past Century" (PDF). Fisheries. 14 (6): 22–38. doi:10.1577/1548-8446(1989)014<0022:EONAFD>2.0.CO;2. hdl:2027.42/141989.
  4. Todd, W.E. Clyde (1924). "A new cuckoo-shrike from Australia" (PDF). Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington. 37: 119–120.
  5. Weiss, Judith Elisabeth (2022-01-13). "Faunal Nature Printing: Traces of Life in Sherman Denton's Moths and Butterflies (1900)". KUNST.LOG. Retrieved 2022-11-18.
  6. González, Jorge M.; Terzenbach, Helga; Orellana, Andrés; Neild, Andrew F. E. (2021). "On the life of Théophile Raymond, his legacy and some of his lepidochromes (butterfly wing transfer prints)". Tropical Lepidoptera Research. 31: 1–32.
  7. Troelstra, A. S. (2016). Bibliography of natural history travel narratives. Utrecht. pp. 127–129. ISBN 978-90-04-34378-8. OCLC 988600447.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  8. Zimmer, Dieter, E. (2012). "A Guide to Nabokov's Butterflies and Moths".{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
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