Before underwater photography, a special group of artists captured the beauty of the fishes of the sea through tile murals in ancient times, woodcuts and oil paintings during the Rennaissance period, and then line drawings, etchings, and various sorts of printed media in the Nineteenth and early to mid-Twentieth Centuries. The fish that were depicted were usually drawn after having met their demise at the hands of either fishermen or, occasionally, scientists on government-sponsored expeditions. When color images were produced, the color was often-times a best guess of the color of the fish in question or the color of the fish after death as opposed to its true life colors. Regardless of this short-coming, many beautiful images were produced. In this sub-album of fish images, the work of artists through 250 years of evolving understanding is reproduced, from fish images of late Seventeenth Century Europe to the beautiful plates accompanying many articles in the United States Fish Commission, and on to the remarkable series of mid-Twentieth Century prints of the fisheries resources of the former Soviet Union. Explore the beauty of the Fishes of the Sea through the eyes of artists recording the remarkable diversity of the sea
