Wilhelm Peters

Wilhelm Karl Hartwich (or Hartwig) Peters (April 22, 1815 in Koldenbüttel - April 20, 1883) was a German naturalist and explorer.

He was assistant to the anatomist Johannes Peter Müller and later became curator of the Berlin Zoological Museum. Encouraged by Müller and the explorer Alexander von Humboldt, Peters travelled to Mozambique via Angola in September 1842, exploring the coastal region and the Zambesi River. He returned to Berlin with an enormous collection of natural history specimens, which he then described in Naturwissenschaftliche Reise nach Mossambique... in den Jahren 1842 bis 1848 ausgeführt (1852–82). The work was comprehensive in its coverage, dealing with mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, river fish, insects and botany. He replaced Martin Lichtenstein as curator of the museum in 1858, and in the same year he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. In a few years time he greatly increased the Berlin Museum's herpetological collection to a size comparable to those of Paris and London. Herpetology was Peters' main interest and he described 122 new genera and 649 species from around the world.

Wilhelm Peters (1851–1935)

Wilhelm Otto Peters (17 August 1851 — 18 November 1935) was a Norwegian painter who participated in the Modern Breakthrough in Nordic painting. He associated closely with the Skagen Painters in the early 1880s and was one of the first to paint the fishermen in Brøndums store.

Early life

Born in Oslo, Peters studied drawing from 1867 to 1870 under David Arnesen and J.F. Eckersberg. Working as an illustrator, he came to the attention of Karl IV who made arrangements for him to study at the Royal Swedish Academy in Stockholm from 1871 to 1873. He then went to Rome where he studied under Antonio Piccinni from 1873 to 1876, completing his studies in 1880 after periods in Munich and Paris.

Career

Educated as a Historicist painter inspired by Alma Tadema, he turned to folklore, exhibiting in Denmark. While in Paris in the late 1879s, he was attracted by French Naturalism. When he arrived in Skagen in 1881, he had gained international experience from his travels to Germany, Rome and Paris and became a contributor to the Modern Breakthrough in Nordic painting.