18 replies to this topic

[Sean Phillips]

I was thinking the other day that it would be pretty cool to make a big poster like collage of some of the very early scientific illustrations of North American fish. By early I mean when the first ichthyologist came to the new world the drawings and sketches they made of the fish they found over here. I've found a few so far but not many. I know there's still modern sketches but like I said, I'm looking for the earliest ones of fishes from North America when Europeans were just starting to come over here and study the new organisms. These are the types of pictures I'm looking for below. If anyone can find anymore good pictures of any freshwater NA natives from this time period please post them here as I'd like to compile as many as I can.

[mattknepley]

That would be a neat project. Maybe Olaf will chime in; I think he's pretty big into "Americana" fish lit.

[zooxanthellae]

The earliest I can recall would be from John White. He was an early colonist and painter in the 1500's who made tons of drawings depicting native americans, including the fishes they caught. 

 

http://en.wikipedia....ist_and_artist)

 

[olaf]

I've been collecting and restoring images of this sort for years. I love old illustrations to an unhealthy degree. I have many plans to use them in both art and future fish publications.
Here's how to find them: read any old books you can and see what older authors they cite, make a list of authors and titles, and then find a good science library that will let you scan their old books. I scan to RAW files at 600-1200 dpi with a super high quality large format scanner. I scan each image several times with different settings (such as white balance, contrast, color adjustments, etc. I then use Photoshop to combine the images and clean them up.
(The sucker image Sean included above is either from my blue sucker post here on this forum or from the blue sucker article my site: http://moxostoma.com/bluesuckernames/. I don't really mind since it's from a low quality PDF source. I did what I could to bring out the details from the stains, but there wasn't sufficient info in the file to get close to the original printed image's quality.)
In general, any PDFs you find online aren't of high enough quality for more than small prints at best (because they were scanned to make the text available without eating up too much bandwidth, and because they're not intended to be printed--just to be seen on screens).

[Sean Phillips]

I've been collecting and restoring images of this sort for years. I love old illustrations to an unhealthy degree. I have many plans to use them in both art and future fish publications.
Here's how to find them: read any old books you can and see what older authors they cite, make a list of authors and titles, and then find a good science library that will let you scan their old books. I scan to RAW files at 600-1200 dpi with a super high quality large format scanner. I scan each image several times with different settings (such as white balance, contrast, color adjustments, etc. I then use Photoshop to combine the images and clean them up.
(The sucker image Sean included above is either from my blue sucker post here on this forum or from the blue sucker article my site: http://moxostoma.com/bluesuckernames/. I don't really mind since it's from a low quality PDF source. I did what I could to bring out the details from the stains, but there wasn't sufficient info in the file to get close to the original printed image's quality.)
In general, any PDFs you find online aren't of high enough quality for more than small prints at best (because they were scanned to make the text available without eating up too much bandwidth, and because they're not intended to be printed--just to be seen on screens).

Thanks for the info! Yes, I did find the suckers from your website. Any specific artists or authors that you know of that I could start with?

[olaf]

I don't have any specific recommendations, but it's often useful to pick a family, genus or species and start by seeing if the original and subsequent descriptions of those fish have illustrations and/or mention previous works. They aren't likely to say that an earlier source has an illustration, but you can usually check them online.
A similar approach is to pick a geographic areaand research the history of exploration there. Once you know who were the first Europeans in the area, find their journals, maps, etc. online and see if they drew any fish. Some of them write endlessly about animals and never mention fish at all, but some do better. Those that explored coasts and big rivers paid more attention to fish, for obvious reasons.
Beware that the early observers very often applied names from their home continent to the fish of this one, despite there being no biological connection between the two fishes, or made up names that don't resemble anything we use now.

[gerald]

on a related topic ...

 

NORTHEAST NATURAL HISTORY & SUPPLY

Natural History Book Sale List XX: Fishes,  April 2015. 

Contact: Jay Cordeiro; unionid@comcast.net; (508) 494-8764

 

The first books list for 2015 has arrived!

 

Northeastern Natural History & Supply is pleased to offer our latest list of rare, antiquarian and out of print books and serials.  List XX includes approximately 500 works on ichthyology, fishes, aquaria, fisheries, fishing and angling.  We have not produced a fishes catalog in 2 ½ years so a new list is past due.  This catalog includes many international titles, some in French and German, dating back to 1830. Titles cover disciplines of taxonomy and classification, identification and morphology, anatomy and physiology, distribution and biogeography, habitat and ecology, hunting and fishing, fisheries and aquaculture, exploration, and paleontology. A few items of interest include William K. Vanderbilt’s Expedition To Galapagos on the “Ara”, Bleeker and Pollen’s Fishes of Madagascar, the fish and reptiles volume of DeKay’s Zoology of New York (we also have other volumes in the series- please inquire), Goode’s complete Fisheries and Fishery Industry of the United States, and what is believed to be one of the first works on keeping home aquaria in the U.S.- The Aquarium by P.H. Gosse. Also included are 20 original lithographic plates from the works of Buffon, Couch, and Donovan.

 

Please contact me with any questions. If I do not respond right away, it is because I’ve gone fishing looking to top New England’s largest record chain pickerel, Esox niger at 9 lbs, 5 oz (set in 1954)!

 

Jay Cordeiro

Northeast Natural History & Supply Co.

24 North Grove Street

Middleboro, MA 02346 USA

unionid@comcast.net

Online: https://sites.google.com/site/northeastnaturalhistory/

Join us on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/NortheastNaturalHistorySupply for future announcements, upcoming lists, new images, and discussion of natural history topics

[olaf]

Most, if not all, of those are readily available online. Not at art quality, but free. NOAA hosts the Goode books (see my blue sucker post for a link).

[Sean Phillips]

Anyone have any decent illustrations of Great Lakes fish? I'd like to make my first project for this to be based around fish found in the Great Lakes or if possible to be so specific, Lake Erie.

[Sean Phillips]

I did some digging and found a lot of good pictures from an artist named HL Todd that I will probably use, but it doesn't cover every species on my list, only about 2/5 of the species I'd like to include. If anyone can find some good sketches or illustrations (preferably older ones without color (so either B&W or tea stained in appearance), but as long as they're hand drawn they're fine) of any of these fish then please post them here or PM me, until then I'll keep searching.

~Species I still need~

Silver Lamprey
Spotted Gar
Longjaw Cisco
Silver Chub
Emerald Shiner
Spottail Shiner
Spotfin Shiner
Sand Shiner
Mimic Shiner
Blacknose Shiner
Bluntnose Minnow
Longnose Sucker
Spotted Sucker
Flathead Catfish
Stonecat
Brindled Madtom
Burbot
Freshwater Drum
Trout Perch
Channel Darter
Logperch
Eastern Sand Darter
Johnny Darter
Greenside Darter
Fourhorn Sculpin
Deepwater Sculpin
Slimy Sculpin
Mottled Sculpin

[Sean Phillips]

I was able to find quite a few more illustrations. I've almost got every fish on my list of ones I'll need for this project. All that remains are these.

Spotted Gar
Longjaw Cisco
Silver Chub
Spotted Sucker
Flathead Catfish
Brindled Madtom
Eastern Sand Darter
Greenside Darter
Hourhorn Sculpin
Spoonhead Sculpin
Slimy Sculpin

[fundulus]

I don't know if the 1890s is too late for your search, but Stephen Foote Denton produced some amazing prints with a focus on New York state. I found one of his originals of a Pumpkinseed at a huge flea market in Massachusetts 25 years ago for $15, that was then....

[az9]

The earliest I can recall would be from John White. He was an early colonist and painter in the 1500's who made tons of drawings depicting native americans, including the fishes they caught. 
 
http://en.wikipedia....ist_and_artist)
 

Thanks for the link. Very interesting reading.

[LargemouthSuckBass]

im very, very late to the party but see if this helps at all

 

https://www.britishm...=ad&toDate=1800

[olaf]

It's been a few years, but for anyone searching for early North American (or anywhere else) fish (or other biological) works:

The Biodiversity Heritage Library is a great resource for scans of old publications. 

https://biodiversitylibrary.org

Allows searching by author, if you know who is likely to have the earliest illustrations, or by scientific name (but keep in mind that the scientific name used today is usually not the one used in the earliest publications. You can often find older synonyms by searching The World Register of Marine Species: http://www.marinespecies.org/index.php(and there are often citations or hints there that will help you figure out who first named that fish).

Also note that in a lot of old books the plates are separate from the text, so a search might take you to an image of the page where a name is used, but it's up to you to read that page and see if a plate or illustration is referenced, then figure out where in the book those images are. Usually at the back, but not always. I click on the multi-page icon, then the minus sign, so I can view a lot of pages at once and scroll through the whole book looking for images. 

 

There are also several projects working on digitizing field notes. BHL: https://www.biodiver...eldNotesProjectis probably the best place to start. They have (I think) all the field notes that the Smithsonian has digitized. There are other projects too. 

[ShadetreeIchthyologist]

Check out https://commons.wiki.../wiki/Main_Page and search the scientific name. I've found several old picture that way plus they're public domain

[olaf]

By the way, ANYTHING (words/books/photos/art/film/audio/etc.) published in 1923 or earlier is public domain in the US. And no one can claim copyright on any reproduction (photo, scan, etc.) of anything in the public domain. So a book published today with photos of old paintings or scans of pre-1924 photos--even if those photos were once copyrighted--can't stop you from re-using those images or compel you to give them credit. The book itself is protected by copyright, but public domain images are still public domain (unless they've been altered in some way that can be considered transformative or creative). A lot of websites and libraries will try to say these things are theirs, but that's legally impossible. There have been court cases where companies tried to sue people for using their photos of old paintings, but it was ruled that since they did not create anything and were just trying to reproduce as faithfully as possible someone else's work, they couldn't claim copyright.

[Michael Wolfe]

Thats very interesting. Is the 1923 a hard date? Or is it a floating one... I mean is it like 75 years? So in a could of years will it be 1925? And the five years later 1930?

[olaf]

Jan. 1 of this year was the first time the cutoff has moved in a long time. Thanks to greed-based increases in copyright term back in the 80s or 90s (I think), it's been 1922 and earlier for a long time. This year we got to add 1923. Next year 1924 and so on. Assuming Disney doesn't convince congress to increase it again.