campanariae polyp cnidaria fine art print ernst haeckel Size:70×100 cm Cartoonist Will Eisner was given

Cartoonist Will Eisner was given the brief of making must-read matter for US fighting folk like the witless Joe Dope

Hamburg – 26 June 1941

The detail invites people to lean in and look closer

Date: 1908

a precursor to the Work Progress Administration's Federal Art Project

campanariae polyp cnidaria fine art print ernst haeckel Size:70×100 cm Cartoonist Will Eisner was givenDelicate to the point of looking spun from glass, the campanularian hydroids in this plate show a side of the ocean most of us never see. Ernst Haeckel drew these colonial polyps tiny relatives of jellyfish and coral as branching, bell tipped structures that rise like underwater plants, each cup and stem traced with extraordinary patience. The illustration is part of Kunstformen der Natur (Art Forms in Nature), Haeckel's influential series in which