Art Nouveau’s Deep Sea Muse

Ernst Haeckel was a German biologist, naturalist, philosopher, physician, professor, and artist who discovered, described and named thousands of new species, mapped a genealogical tree relating all life forms, and coined many terms in biology.

The HMS Challenger, a Royal Navy vessel, circumnavigated the globe from 1872 to 1876 as a floating laboratory focused on exploring the ocean floor. Haeckel was enlisted to visualize the expedition’s sea creature findings, such as siphonophores, medusae (jellyfish), and microscopic radiolarians.

Art Forms from the Abyss: Ernst Haeckel’s Images From The HMS Challenger Expedition, features rare selections from his 222 lithographs of marine microorganisms that accompanied the volumes of scientific reports from the expedition.

The HMS Challenger plankton images are available to download online through Bangor University.

More here

I previously posted about Haeckel here, here and here