Art Forms of Nature: The Ernst Haeckel Collection

Haeckel produced illustrations that people could take in and understand, images that glowed with color and brought the exotic and remote in to the libraries of the world. Really, there had not been anything like these extraordinary prints before. They were the culmination of decades of works for Haeckel, a contemporary of Darwin and he did much to popularize the work of the English naturalist although their ideas did diverge at several important points, as we shall later discover. The above is the 89th plate from Art Forms of Nature and shows a variety of turtle species. From the Leatherback at the top left to the Common Snapping Turtle (bottom right), Haeckel captures them marvelously. This was no attempt at photorealism, however. Note how sea and land (seamlessly) merge in the picture. His images, did, however, encapsulate his sense of order. LINK