Down the rabbit hole on giant octopi
So the other day I linked a picture of a giant octopus devouring a ship. Just because I thought it was fun. It was a copy of Pierre Denys de Montfort's Poulpe Colossal.
De Montfort (1766–1820) was a French naturalist and studied giant octopuses, as I too would have done if I were a man, and probably rich, at this point in history. Why not. His Wikipedia page references 'a disgraceful revelation' with no further details. I assume the worst.
Entirely separately I was looking for a nice illustration of geological strata and quickly came across the work of Orra White. Who has also made a copy of the Poulpe Colossal.
Orra White Hitchcock (1796 - 1863) was a scientific illustrator best known for the Scientific Illustrations for the Classroom. The Public Domain Review has an excellent article about her and her work:
Highly trained, white, and wealthy, she was far from an oddity in nineteenth-century education. Like many other women of her class, Hitchcock received extensive instruction in the arts and sciences, making a name by working alongside, not beneath, a man who had easier access to academic opportunities. Variously lauded as “an anomaly” and “the most remarkable” of their era, her scientific illustrations have rarely been considered on their own terms — admired for the natural historical and religious knowledge they contain — without being made an exemplar of the broader category of “women’s work”.
I'm a big fan of Victorian-era botanical artists and scientific illustrators - I've got a project on the go about Marianne North - so Orra White Hitchcock fits right in. Amherst College has more information.
Also, I just love me a kraken, along with the fascinating potential of globsters. Wikipedia has a fun list of Kraken in popular culture along with this gem:
In silent films of the 1910s and 1920s, the Kraken was often portrayed using stock footage of an octopus in a bathtub attacking a toy ship.