'Animal Kingdom' illustrations on view in Library's Special Collections Gallery

Illustration from ‘American Ornithology, or, the Natural History of the Birds of the United States,’ by Alexander Wilson. Philadelphia, Bradford and Inskeep, 1808-1814, Special Collections, University of Delaware Library

1:50 p.m., Feb. 5, 2007--The University of Delaware Library presents a new exhibition, “The Animal Kingdom: Six Centuries of Zoological Illustration,” from Feb. 13-June 12, in the Special Collections Gallery of the Morris Library. The curator is Iris Snyder, associate librarian of special collections.

The exhibition draws on Special Collections' extensive collection of books, containing scientific and artistic images of animals from the 16th-21st centuries.

Animal images from the 16th century are from early printed herbals and travel books. The artists rarely worked from actual specimens but from their imaginations or the descriptions of others, often resulting in fantastic creatures, such as unicorns and mermaids. Books from the 16th century include Petrie Andreoe Matthioli senensis medici:commentarii in sex libros Pedacii Dioscoridis and Ortus sanitatis.

During the continuing age of exploration in the 17th and 18th centuries, explorers brought back animal specimens, both dead and alive, which resulted in more realistic depictions. Later, artists were included in explorers' crews, and they did the first drawings of exotic creatures from life. Mark Catesby's The Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands is an important work from this period.

During this period, the development of the microscope also allowed animals be depicted at a cellular level. Robert Hooke's Micrographia restaurata (1745), for example, features illustrations of insects that are much larger than life.

Artistically and scientifically, the 19th century yielded great works of zoological illustration, including the masterpieces of John J. Audubon. The University of Delaware owns several Audubon publications, including the Bien edition of Birds of America (1860) and the elephant folio edition of The Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America (1845).

Other important works of the period in the exhibition include Alexander Wilson's American Ornithology (1808) and Spencer Fullerton Baird's The Birds of North America (1870). Although some drawings and paintings were used to illustrate 20th-century natural history texts, with the development of photography, the great age of zoological illustration and the scientist/artist ended.

The artistic use of animal imagery, however, remains strong, and many well-known artists and fine-press printers have produced books on real and imaginary animals. Artist Leonard Baskin has created several books, including Diptera: A Book of Flies & Other Insects (1983) and Lepidoptera fantastica (1994). Images by book artists, including John Digby, John De Pol and Peter Koch, show the variety and creativity of animal illustration today.

The Special Collections holdings of the University of Delaware Library include books, manuscripts, maps, prints, photographs, broadsides, periodicals, pamphlets and other materials from the 15th-20th century, with strengths in English, Irish and American literature, history and Delawareana, horticulture and the history of science and technology.

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