Something fishy going on here (Image: TASCHEN)
Gallery: The fantasy fish of Samuel Fallours
LOBSTERS that live on mountains, fish with top hats on their bellies and mermaids that utter mouse-like cries. Welcome to the weird world of Samuel Fallours. In 1719, Fallours published the world’s first colour catalogue of fish. A soldier turned clergyman’s assistant, he lived on the island of Ambon in what is now Indonesia. The fish he painted were caught off Ambon in the Banda Sea. This area lies at the heart of the Coral Triangle, which is thought to contain more marine species than any other region of the world.
Just 100 copies of his catalogue were published, making it “one of the rarest natural history books on Earth”, says Theodore Pietsch, a professor of marine science at the University of Washington in Seattle who has assembled the plates into a new book, Tropical Fishes of the East Indies.
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Gallery: The fantasy fish of Samuel Fallours
