Art Forms in Nature: Prints of Ernst Haeckel

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The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. The published artwork of Haeckel includes over 100 detailed, multi-colour illustrations of animals and sea creatures (see: Kunstformen der Natur, "Art Forms of Nature"). The first set included Desmonema annasethe (now Cyanea annasethe), a particularly striking jellyfish that Haeckel observed and described shortly after the death of his wife Anna Sethe.

You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. Moreover, just as the highest animals have been evolved from the simplest forms of life, so the highest faculties of the human mind have been evolved from the soul of the brute-beasts, and more remotely from the simple cell-soul of the unicellular Protozoa.However, the wonderful ability to make a priori judgements has arisen through the inheritance of cerebral structures, which the vertebrate ancestors of humans acquired slowly and in stages (through adaptation and synthetic association of a posteriori experiences and perceptions). This last position he retained for 43 years, in spite of repeated invitations to migrate to more important centres, such as Strassburg or Vienna, and at Jena he spent his life, with the exception of the time he devoted to travelling in various parts of the world, whence in every case he brought back a rich zoological harvest. Gorgeous prints, as virtually everyone agrees, but the first of the two introductory essays really fell flat.

We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. The introductory essays provided good background material as well, although it would have been nice to hear more of Haeckel's own voice. Marine Biological Laboratory Library - An exhibition of material on Haeckel, including background on many Kunstformen der Natur plates.Originally published in Germany as Kunstformen der Natur, it is long out of copyright and available online in various formats.