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Illustrators and printers have struggled with how best to represent the vibrant colours and unusual shapes of fish on the page. The invention of chromolithography presented a new way to print in colour, and this technique was quickly used to print…

The decorative title page of Strack’s work credits “Arnz & Co” as the lithographers.

This page from Strack’s Naturgeschichte in Bildern mit erläuterndem [1826] illustrates three species of fish grouped together because of their unusual body shapes.

Colourful tropical fish such as these from Strack’s Naturgeschichte in Bildern mit erläuterndem [1826] were popular subjects in colour-plate books about fish.

Colourful tropical fish such as these from Strack’s Naturgeschichte in Bildern mit erläuterndem [1826] were popular subjects in colour-plate books about fish.

Colourful tropical fish such as these from Strack’s Naturgeschichte in Bildern mit erläuterndem [1826] were popular subjects in colour-plate books about fish.

Renard’s Poissons, Ecrevisses et Crabes is one of the most significant books on fish. It is frequently cited as the first book about fish to be issued from the publisher with coloured plates and is well-known among natural history collectors for…

This plate from my fragmentary copy of Renard’s Poissons [1754] illustrates four species of tropical fish from the Indonesian archipelago.

This plate from my fragmentary copy of Renard’s Poissons [1754] illustrates three species of tropical fish from the Indonesian archipelago.

The nineteenth century ushered in an explosion of technical works on the anatomy of fish. Works on comparative anatomy were popular, as were detailed works on single species of fish. Bakker’s contribution to the anatomy of fish, Osteographia…