White Whale Beluga Vintage Animal Print 1991 W.H. Lizars

A colour print, rescued from a disbound book of Animal prints from 1991, with unrelated text on the reverse. Original printing date 1831, this is a reprint.

Suitable for framing, image size is approx 11.25" x 8.5" or 28.5cm x 21.5cm edge to edge plus a 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.

White Whale
BELUGA OR GREAT WHITE DOLPHIN, Delp hinapterns beluga (now White Whale, Delpliinapterus leucas). Hand coloured engraving by W. H. Lizars from an original drawing by Patrick Syme, pl. 16 from J. Wilson's Illustrations of Zoology, 1831.

The reason this strange looking creature found its way into James Wilson's Illustrations of Zoology is probably because, for about three months in the spring of 1815, it became a talking point among the intelligentsia of Edinburgh, where Wilson worked. Wilson tells us that it 'was observed to inhabit the Firth of Forth, passing upwards almost every day with the tide, and returning again with the ebbing of the waters. It excited great attention by the purity of its colour, and frequent attempts were made to slay or secure it, but without effect, till the 7th ofJune, when it was killed in the river near Stirling, by means of spears and fire arms. It was purchased by Mr Robert Bald of Alloa, and kindly transmitted by him to Professor Jameson, and on examination was found to be the Beluga of naturalists.' It measured 14 feet 4 inches from the tip of the jaw to the end of the tail, so it was a youngster; this pure white, gentle creature may grow to almost twice this length.
Normally white whales frequent coasts bordering the Arctic Ocean where their white bodies are not easily seen against the ice and snow. Occasionally, however, young examples will swim far up rivers and have even been reported 700 miles up the River Yukon. This gives fishermen a chance to trap and kill them and explains the presence of one in a river near Stirling in Scotland. But how can the presence of an iceberg in the background of Wilson's picture be explained, bearing in mind the geographical position of Stirling? The answer is simple. In 1820, eleven years before Wilson's book was published, William Scoresby had published at Edinburgh An Account of the Arctic Regions, with a History and Description of the Northern Whale-Fishery; it includes an engraving of the white whale, complete with iceberg, almost identical with Wilson's. The one Wilson wrote about was not the same as the one he illustrated, but that may have seemed unimportant in 1831.