Part VI 1883 Beautifull and Curious Birds of the W…

Joseph Smit (1836 - 1929)

Dutch-born zoological artist who became one of the most prolific and respected wildlife artists of the Victorian era. Born in Lisse, Netherlands, he initially trained as a lithographer and received his first major break when Hermann Schlegel, director of the Natural History Museum in Leiden, commissioned him to create lithographs for a book on the birds of the Dutch East Indies. This success led to an invitation to Britain in 1866 by Philip Lutley Sclater to illustrate Exotic Ornithology, prompting Smit to move his family to London and begin a long, distinguished career in English natural history circles. In London, Smit formed a significant professional partnership with the renowned animal painter Joseph Wolf, often performing the lithography for Wolf’s drawings on major projects such as The Book of Antelopes and Zoological Sketches. Over the following decades, he contributed hundreds of accurate and highly detailed illustrations to the Zoological Society of London publications, including roughly 600 for its Proceedings and nearly 150 for its Transactions. His versatility extended beyond birds and mammals; he notably provided some of the earliest popular reconstructions of dinosaurs and prehistoric creatures for Henry Neville Hutchinson’s 1892 book, Extinct Monsters. Following Wolf’s death in 1899, Smit was widely regarded as England’s leading mammal illustrator, known for setting his subjects in realistic, attractive habitats. He worked on 15 major bird books and contributed to numerous scientific journals like Nature and The Field. In 1905, he retired to Radlett, Hertfordshire, where he lived until his death in 1929 at the age of 93.

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