A cape rain frog from Georges Louis Leclerc Buffon’s Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière t.30 (1788).
Full text here.
A lion and unicorn playing chess from James McNeill Whistler’s The portfolio : an artistic periodical (1880). From the text:
“[…] in the scene on a papyrus in the British Museum of the lion and unicorn playing at chess, though [the lion] is obviously an emblem of royalty, the caricaturist has not aimed at representing majesty. This, however, is of the Roman period, and has probably but little of the Egyptian character.”
Full text here.
Nature illustrations from Shiichi Tajima’s Shinbi taikan v.4 (1900) and v.8 (1902).
Full texts here:
https://library.si.edu/digital-library/book/shinbi-taikan
Exploration of shapes used in Japanese illustrations from Henry P. Bowie’s On the laws of Japanese painting (1911).
Full text here.
