Colorful Tropical Fish # 21

About this chart:

This is a chart-THIS IS NOT A KIT- NO FLOSS IS INCLUDED

One of the first depictions of marine fauna came from Samuel Fallours, who was in the service of the Dutch East India Company. He made drawings of fish and other marine organisms of the Indian Ocean and brought them back to Holland in 1712. His drawings belong to a number of sets of similar drawings, depicting hundreds of animals, mostly fish but also crustaceans, insects, a dugong, and even a mermaid. Some of these became the basis for 18th-century publications, among them Louis Renard’s Poissons, Ecrevisses et Crabes (1719) and François Valentijn’s Verhandeling der Ongemeene Visschen van Amboina, a chapter in his Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indien (1724−1726).  Samuel Fallours born in Rotterdam began his career as a common soldier in the service of the Dutch East India Company. By June 1706, he was serving as a soldier in Ambon, assigned to the main guard-house of Castle Victoria. From September 1706 to June 1712, he held the title of Associate Curate, a kind of assistant to the clergy, entrusted with consoling the sick of Ambon. He left the Indies for the Netherlands in November 1712. During his sojourn in Ambon, (1706-1712) Fallours executed the illustrations.

Louis Renard (1678–1746) was a French protestant refugee who became a successful book dealer and publisher based in Amsterdam. His most noteworthy production, Fish, Crayfish and Crabs was first published in 1719. It is one of the rarest and most famous natural history books known, and it is one of the very few pre-Linnaean works on fishes to be published in color. The full title of the work is Poissons, écrevisses et crabes, de diverses couleurs et figures extraordinaires, que l’on trouve autour des isles Moluques, et sur les cõtes des terres australes. A translation of the title, “Fishes, crayfishes, and crabs, of diverse coloration and extraordinary form, which are to be found about the Islands of the Moluccas and on the coasts of the Southern Lands,” gives a glimpse of its remarkable contents. There are 100 brilliantly colored plates created by the artist Samuel Fallours that represent 416 fishes, 40 crustaceans, two insects, a dugong, and even a mermaid. Despite their fanciful appearance, scientists can identify the species depicted in most of the illustrations. Aside from testimonials about the work’s veracity, it contains no text apart from the engraved descriptions on the plates themselves. But almost every fish is assessed in terms of its edibility, and many descriptions include brief recipes.