Alfred Russel Wallace was born #OTD 200 years ago (8 Jan. 1823). Here’s his original sketch & published drawing of a frog previously unknown to science & now named in his honor, Wallace’s Flying Frog:
This gallery contains 5 photos.
Happy International Red Panda Day, celebrated annually on the 3rd Saturday of September! The Red Panda (Ailurus fulgens, which roughly translates to “shining cat”), is a small mammal native to the eastern Himalayas and southwestern China. It is the only extant species of the Ailuridae family, nestled within the “weasel…
Festival Kimono, Akita Prefecture, Tōhoku region, Honshū. Late 19th-early 20th century. Cotton; shibori (shape resist) 51 × 50 inches (129.6 × 127 cm) “The motif on the back of the garment is known as koi no takinobori (“carp ascending a waterfall”), which was an immensely popular design. It references a…
The new Smithsonian Associates program catalog lists a pair of webinars of interest to animal art history, each focused on a famous female natural history artist: The Irrepressible Rosa Bonheur: The 19th Century’s Most Famous Woman ArtistEvening Lecture/SeminarWednesday, November 16, 2022 – 6:45 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. ET Maria Sibylla…
The Walters Art Museum just announced a virtual event scheduled for Thursday 4 August from 6pm-7pm (Eastern U.S. time), tied into their current Majolica Mania exhibition, and specifically, its star attraction: The star of the Majolica Mania exhibition is a five-foot-tall ceramic peacock nicknamed Percy. This impressive sculpture celebrates the…
The vivid feathers were expensive, with the most prized specimens imported from Cambodia and Vietnam. Artisans cut them to shape before painstakingly pasting the feathers onto gilded metal backing that formed the structure of the headdresses. Precious and semiprecious stones such as rubies, agate, and jadeite as well as other…
Rosa Bonheur (French, 1822–1899), Chamois Mother and Baby, 1888oil on canvasNational Museum of Wildlife Art, Jackson, WY (USA) Rosa Bonheur (1822-1899) was one of the most famous women artists of the 19th century and one of the most esteemed animal painters in history. Her reputation and popularity grew steadily during…
This is from a series of nine woodcuts depicting humorous scenes of anthropomorphic goldfish, frogs, and turtles. This particular piece is inspired by the pun of its title, playing off the the fact that in Japanese niwaka ame (にわか あめ) means “shower” and amenbo (アメンボ) means “water striders” — hence,…
It’s on my to-do list to try to identify all the different species scurrying around here. For now, I’ll just note that there is an imposter crustacean in the mix — Horseshoe Crabs (family Limulidae) aren’t true crabs, and aren’t even crustaceans. 😉 (They’re chelicerates, a whole different subphylum of arthropods…
