Ocean Life
This fascinating and detailed depiction in lithograph of underwater life, dated 1859, is available on a range of Arty Stuff gifts and homeware including phone and tablet cases, prints and wall art canvases, cushions, tote bags and kitchen ware.
Christian Schussele, the first professor in drawing and painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, was chiefly a genre, history painter and portrait painter, yet his subject matter occasionally reflected Philadelphia’s scientific tradition, as in this watercolour. One of the earliest American submarine illustrations, this picture was executed expressly for lithographic reproduction in a pamphlet of the same title published in Philadelphia in 1859.
James M. Sommerville (1825 - 1899), a physician, amateur naturalist, member of the Academy of Natural Sciences, as well as an artist and a trustee of the Pennsylvania Academy, was probably the designer of the watercolour. He collected the specimens, wrote the text of the pamphlet and lithographed the image.
Credit: Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Erving Wolf, in memory of Diane R. Wolf, 1977
