Lumpsucker Vintage 1990 Fish Print Gosta Sundman

A colour print, rescued from a disbound book of Fish prints from 1990, with unrelated text on the reverse. Original printing date 1883, see text below.

Suitable for framing, image size is approx 12" x 8.25" or 30.5cm x 21cm edge to edge plus small white border.

This is a vintage print not a modern copy and can show signs of age or previous use commensurate with the age of the print. Please view any scans as they form part of the description.

All pictures will be sent bagged and in a board backed envelope for protection in transit.

While every care is taken to ensure my scans or photos accurately represent the item offered for sale, due to differences in monitors and internet pages my pictures may not be an exact match in brightness or contrast to the actual item.

Text taken from the opposite page. Please note this cannot be supplied with the print due to being on the reverse side of the previous print. Any spelling errors are due to the OCR program used.

Lumpsucker
LUMPSUCKER, Cyclopterus lumpus. Chromolithograph from drawings by Gösta Sundman, pl. 32 from G. Sundman and 0. M. Reuter's The Fishes of Finland, 1883-93.

The popular name of this fish is derived from the modified fin on its breast which functions as a sucker enabling it to clamp itself on to rocks. It lives in the northern part of the Atlantic and stays near or on the sea bed down to a depth of about 150 feet.
The colours with which the artist has invested the three specimens shown in this illustration are misleading. Lumpsuckers are usually mid- to light grey in colour, as in the top figure, except in the breeding season when the males develop a red or orange belly and a more blueish back (bottom right). After spawning the males guard the developing eggs and so remain near the spawning sites close inshore long after the females have returned to deeper water. Following storms their conspicuously coloured bodies are sometimes washed up on shore. The figure at bottom left is probably meant for a male in breeding colours but it seems that the artist, or whoever was responsible for the colouring of the published plate, has been too generous with red pigment.