Natural history illustration is a wonderful art.
It can really kind of very subtly highlight the features that are very
important for particular species in a way that a photograph
can't necessarily.
Natural Histories came about because we wanted to let
people outside the Museum know about the rich rare book collection contained here.
Scientific illustration serves many purposes.
Obviously in the days before photography and other forms of documentation developed,
drawing or original art was the only way to capture
the likeness of certain organisms, people or places,
and therefore was the only way to transmit or share this information with others.
this is Hooke's Micrographia
from 1667. This was the first time many people
had seen any of these familiar objects through a microscope
Of the published works based on expeditions, none is better known
than The Zoology of the Voyage of the Beagle.
Charles Darwin was a member of this trip, and acted as the editor
for the published work.
While many of the illustrations are depicted on small, hand-colored lithographs
some illustrations such as this reproduction
of a Toxodon skull, an extinct South American mammal,
were deemed too important to show at a reduced scale and were produced
in their natural size.
We don't know who created these beautiful, beautiful depictions of fish,
but clearly whoever it was they were working extremely closely
under the guidance of Marcus Bloch this is probably been preserved for about 30
years
even of the you know a couple of months the specimen has lost its collar
so one of the great advantages of having a really good scientific
I'm illustration is that the hand depict that color
and you can actually count the number of spines from the I
to the dorsal fin and they would match these
and that's how we know that he was right this is diet on History X
I'll re Sevilla marion was the well-known
eighteenth-century illustrator travel to Dutch Suriname
and collected an illustrated many other the
in sex she found there I'll
ok in figuring out which works to include
wheel 18 examples that were at incredibly widely known we wanted to
find some some hidden gems within the collection
we also wanted to show our range oven works and the
printing processes contained therein home I hope this collection and images
will give an understanding of the origins of the science
behind these works and a better appreciation
on the art eliminating pages are
are
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