Studio RT Ltd

Description

We are pleased to offer for sale a pair of Chromolithographs from Andrew Garrett's Fische der Sudsee, (Fish of the South Seas) published by L. Friederichsen & Co. of Hamburg in the Journal of the Museum Godeffroy in Hamburg. The journal was published between 1873 and 1910. We have three pairs of these Chromolithographs for sale, or the set of six, if required.

This pair are A. Balistes verrucosus and B. Balistes ostracion fornasini to the left Volume XVII Plate 169 and Tetrodon meleagris,albino Volume XVII Plate 173 on the right.

Andrew Garrett (1823–1887), was an American explorer, naturalist and illustrator. He specialized in malacology and ichthyology.

Garrett was born in Albany, New York his family moved to Middlebury, Vermont, when he was a child. Considering himself a "Vermontian" throughout his life, he went to sea at age 16 (after an apprenticeship in a local iron foundry) mainly to get away and collect sea shells.

Making Hawaii his home from 1857 to 1863, Garrett was initially supported and sponsored by local shell collectors, including the malacologist William Harper Pease. They admired his zeal and sense of adventure as together they found new species and developed a keen sense for scientific details. Soon they were publishing papers on the topic of conchology, for both for local and international scientists - mostly under Pease's name.

Running out of funds, Garrett approached the ichthyologist Louis Agassiz, who had moved from his native Switzerland to head the new department of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University. Within the year he was part of a team that hunted for unusual species all over Polynesia, to sketch and paint them as lifelike as possible and send fishes conserved in alcohol for the growing collection at Harvard.

Completely self-taught, Garrett became a renowned and admired specialist in the field himself: a skilled artist and adventurer-scientist, he eventually found a new sponsor in Cesar Godeffroy, a wealthy scion of international commerce based in Hamburg, Germany. This support helped him explore and describe the shells and fishes of Eastern Polynesia: Samoa, Fiji and other locations. Settling on the island of Huahine in 1870, he made it his home and headquarters as he kept collecting shells, fish and eventually also native tools and artifacts, of anthropological importance, to the Museum Godeffroy in Germany until 1879, when Godeffroy went bankrupt.

Garrett's seminal work Fische der Sundsee was first published in 1872 and remained of primary importance for the next generation of ichthyologists. He never returned to the United States, and died on November 1, 1887, on the island of Huahine where he had put down roots. Rumor has it that he wrote his own obituary, and had the local missionary Ebenezer Cooper (from the London Missionary Society) send it out into the world he had left behind in his wanderings.

In addition to hundreds of specimens and descriptions received by Godeffroy in the late 1860s and early 70s was a collection of nearly 500 Garrett drawings of fishes. Impressed with the high quality of the drawings and detailed descriptions, Godeffroy passed them on to Albert Günther (1830–1914) at the then British Museum (Natural History) in London, with a request to edit and prepare the material for publication. “We notice with pleasure the German House of J. C. Godeffroy & Son, doing business at the Samoa Islands and in Micronesia, are publishing a series of illustrated works on natural history, relating to Polynesia. Mr. Garrett, the American Naturalist, so well known throughout Polynesia, and who gathered all sorts of strange fish and sea ‘monsters' for Prof. Agassiz, has found liberal patrons in J. C. Godeffroy & Son”. The result was “Andrew Garrett's Fische der Südsee,” published in Hamburg (1873–1910) in nine parts in the Journal des Museum Godeffroy and subsequently bound in three volumes—a work that was of primary importance to the next generation of ichthyologists.

The Chromolithographs were created by J. Green, an artist who was working at the British Museum at the time.

All six of the Chromolithographs have been newly framed in a dove grey with ochre line frame and double mounted in two tone to complement. This pair have an inner mount in dark gray to tone with the fish. They will be supplied with new brass fittings, new brass picture wire and will be ready to hang.

Image sizeL 12 5/8 x 9 1/2 inches - 32cm x 24.15cm

Frame size: 20 1/4 x 17 1/8 inches - 51.45cm x 43.5cm

Medium Chromolithograph on paper

Condition: Very good. The colours are bold and there is no foxing, but there are two pinprick specks in the paper of the right hand one, and one circular black dot above the writing above the smaller fish on the left hand one, as shown. The mounts and frames are new.