Fish – Chaetodon Glaucus

This striking, originally hand-colored folio engraving is from Marcus Elieser Bloch’s Ichthyologie, ou Histoire Naturelle Generale et Particuliere des Poissons. The work was published in Berlin by the author and F. de la Garde between 1785 and 1797 and was the first French edition.

The engravers for the work were Ludwig Schmidt, F. Berger, P. Haas, and Moritz Bodenehr. The original illustrations were done by Johan Friedrich Henning, Johan Friedrich August Krueger, Printz Moritz, and Pater Plumier. The names of the fish are typically printed to the plate in Latin, French, English and German.

Ichthyologie is noted as “… the finest illustrated work on fishes ever produced. The plates, by a variety of artists and engravers, are outstandingly coloured, and are heightened with gold, silver, and bronze to produced the metallic sheen of fish scales.” (Nissen)

Marcus Elieser Bloch (1723-1799) was a medical doctor before he became fascinated with fish later in his life. He collected several of his own specimens to produce this famous work which described over 200 species of fish.