An extraordinary compilation of various species of lizards, from Ernst Haeckel’s work Kunstformen der Natur (Art Forms in Nature) 1899 — 1904. As a young man Haeckel considered a career as a painter, but he eventually chose to study science and thereby combined the two in his artwork.

Thomas Watling was a Scottish artist sent to Australia as a convict in 1791. He painted this laughing kookaburra watercolour. The inscription reads: ‘Two thirds the Natural size Native name Goo-ge-na-gan.’

Maria Merian, a German entomologist and artist, travelled to Surinam in 1699. She produced a folio-sized book (published 1726) with engraved plates based on her watercolours of the insects and associated plants of the area, to educate audiences about the tropics of the New World.

A red-shouldered hawk painted by John James Audubon, who relocated from USA to London in 1827 and elicited the help of the Havell workshop to carry out the engraving, printing and colouring of his magnificent plates. This was a twelve-year process.

Watling’s ‘A Native Wounded while asleep’, a watercolour published in the Port Jackson Painter, is more of an artistic impression than most other portraits of this time, being framed in tondo with a black border and the subject depicted in a typical classical Greek pose.

William Cornwallis Harris, born 1807, travelled in South Africa during his time as an army officer in the East India Company. He devoted his leisure time to making accurate portraits of animals, particularly large quadrupeds like this cape mountain zebra, which he believed to be too often depicted inaccurately.

This illustration of a porcupine was drawn at a third of its natural size. It was one of the drawings selected and copied by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins for John Edward Gray’s Illustrations of Indian Zoology, published in 1830-1834. The lithograph by Hawkins fails to capture the richness and depth of the original watercolour, drawn by Thomas Hardwicke.

For almost 20 years John Reeves dedicated much of his time to investigating the natural history of China and commissioning and compiling one of the largest collections of natural history artwork. Hundreds of drawings of plants, insects, birds, mammals, molluscs, fish and crustaceans were collated through the energies of this one man, an English tea inspector fo the East India Company in China.

Ferdinand Bauer was foremost a botanical artist but, as his zoological drawings demonstrate, he was also a wonderful animal illustrator. The Austrian artist attended an expedition to Australia during 1801—1803, during which he illustrated these platypuses. His Australian animals are the first accurate drawings of some of the species of the southern hemisphere and include detailed anatomical parts of the animal.