
Ocean Life, 1859

by Metropolitan Museum of Art
Title
Ocean Life, 1859
Artist
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Medium
Painting - Photograph
Description
Ocean life. Watercolor designed by James M. Sommerville (1825-1899) and painted by Christian Schussele (1824-1879). 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 watercolor. 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 watercolor. He collected the specimens, wrote the text of the pamphlet and lithographed the image.
Uploaded
April 27th, 2017
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