From the Inside Flap
Kunstformen der Natur, or Art Forms in Nature, encapsulates biologist Ernst Haeckel's response to Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species. Haeckel (German, 1834-1919) published these exquisitely rendered depictions of flora and fauna in ten installments of ten illustrations from 1899 to 1904, aiming to widen the general public's understanding of naturalism. Haeckel's elaborate forms have been called a precursor to art nouveau, and his influence even stretched to architecture. These illustrations derive from a copy of Kunstformen der Natur in the Case Book Collection in the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress.
