Jansson accompanied Carl Akeley on Akeley's final expedition to Africa in 1926 to gather field sketches for the dioramas in the African Hall. A. A. Jansson was the one who suggested to Akeley that W. R. Leigh (William Robinson Leigh) be hired as the second artist for the expedition. Jansson had earlier in his career studied art with Leigh.
Further Biographical Context for Arthur August Jansson
Born in 1890, Arthur August Jansson's creative work was primarily influenced by the 1900s and 1910s. The first decades of the 20th century were defined by the vibrant development of visual and pictorial art. These years were an era of experimentation, with artists delving into ideas surrounding Post-Impressionism, Expressionism and Abstraction. These developments inspired artist communities and collectives around the world, with many groups developing a variety of ways of expressing their ideas. The first twenty years of the twentieth century are seen as the period in art history where modernist and modern ideas first began to have cultural effects. They were a prolific time in the art world, and industrial advances such as mechanisation led to other disciplines like architecture, led by the work of Le Corbusier and Gerrit Rietveld, to grow at an equally high rate. The notion of a common discipline across all modes of art was epitomised in the Bauhaus movement, which became a leading way of thinking about art. These philosophies that we associate today with modern and contemporary art can be traced back to the diverse range of artworks produced at this time.