HAECKEL - AMMONITIDA - AMMONITES - MOLLUSC print

This striking, original and very rare colour lithograph of Ammonites is from Ernst Haeckel’s epoch-making work, “Kunstformender der Natur” (Art Forms in Nature), published in Leipzig and Vienna by Verlag des Bibliographischen Instituts, 1899 - 1904.

"The chief purpose of my Kunstformen der Natur was aesthetic. I wished to make accessible to far more of the educated general public those marvellous treasurers of beauty that lie hidden in the depths of ocean or which in account of their diminutive size, can be viewed only through a microscope."

Ernst Heinrich Haeckel was born in Potsdam, Germany, in 1834. After receiving his medical degree in Berlin in 1857, he taught comparative anatomy and zoology, and headed the Zoological Institute at Jenna from 1865.

Haeckel was profoundly influenced by the publication of Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species”, whose theories are reflected in all of Haeckel’s work.

“His considerable artistic talent, assisted by his fertile imagination produced many of the most beautiful representations of animal forms ever made.”

"The Art of Natural History, Animal Illustrators and their Work” by S. Peter Dance, New York 1978