Smit Original Early Drawing of Mosasaurus

SMIT, Joseph (1836-1929).
Mosasaurus, Chirocentrus, Beryx, & Portheus.
Original Illustration in pen, ink and grey wash, heightened in white.
c.1905-1912.
7 1/4" x 10 5/8" sheet.

Original artwork for Henry R. Knipe's Nebula to Man. Illustrated on page 87.

Drawings prepared for Knipe's Nebula to Man (1905) contributed to one of the most important publications on dinosaurs on the heels of the Great Dinosaur Rush or Bone Wars. The Bone Wars occurred between 1877 and 1892 between Edward Drinker Cope, the Academy of Natural Sciences Philadelphia, and Othniel Charles Marsh, the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale. These early paleontologists fought ruthlessly to pursue dinosaur fossils, a quest that resulted in an extraordinary period of discovery and the eventual financial ruin of both scientists. Their findings resulted in the unearthing of 136 new dinosaurs species, which ushered in a new paleontological research era. According to Henry Knipe's obituary, he worked for the British Museum. It was there that he likely met the artists tapped for this project. Knipe chose each illustrator for their reputation for scientific authenticity namely, those skilled as bird artists given the many similarities between bird species and dinosaurs. Josef Smit's dinosaur drawings are a high point in his fine draughtsmanship and unique in his vision to construct an image based on a written description rather than a physical specimen. Knipe's preface indicates that Smit also learned much from Charles Knight's drawings at the Museum of Natural History, New York. Josef Smit was born and raised in Lisse, in southern Holland. Later, in Leiden, his scientific fidelity came to the Natural History Museum of Leiden director Hermann Schlegel's attention. He presented the artist with his first commission to paint a series of birds from the Dutch East Indies. Smit's work for Schlegel earned him a significant commission to prepare hundreds of plates for Philip Sclater's Exotic Ornithology. Once in London, the artist met other like-minded artist-naturalists and developed a reputation for preparing very realistic drawings. Because of his ability to delineate every detail of a specific bird, he was employed by several scientists to illustrate their reports and publications. His work stood apart from his contemporaries in his addition of thorough backgrounds of leaves, vines, and tree branches. Smit eventually became a key contributor to some of the most important natural history publications of the 19th and early-20th centuries. His work graced the tomes by John Gould, Edward Lear, Archibald Thorburn, Henry Constantine Richter, and J.G. Keulemans. His son, Pierre-Jacques Smit was also a skilled watercolorist.

1. Mosasaurus, meaning "lizard of the Meuse River” is the type genus of the mosasaurs, an extinct group of aquatic sqauamate reptiles. It lived from about 82 to 66 million years ago during the Campanian and Maastrichtian states of the Late Cretaceous. The earliest fossils known to science were found as skulls in a chalk quarry near the Dutch city of Maastricht in the late 1700s, which were initially thought to have been the bones of crocodiles or whales. One particular skull discovered at around 1780, and which was seized during the French Revolutionary Wars for its scientific value and transported to Paris, was famously nicknamed the "great animal of Maastricht".

2. The dorab wolf-herring (Chirocentrus dorab) is a fish species from the genus Chirocentrus of the family Chirocentridae. It is a coastal fish, silvery below and bright blue above. It is found in both marine and brackish or estuarine waters, feeding on smaller fish and possibly crustaceans. Chirocentrus is from the Greek cheir meaning hand and kentron meaning sting. Dorab is from the Arabic language word darrab (ضرّاب) and the word is probably a corrupted form of durubb (دُرُبّ) the name for goldfish in Arabic. It has another Arabic name, lisan (لسان) which means tongue.

3. Beryx is a genus of alfonsinos found in deep oceanic waters. Two of its member species, B. decadactylus and B. splendens, are found across nearly the entire globe and are of some commercial importance..

4. Portheus molossus Cope is a junior synonym of the species Xiphactinus audax (from Latin and Greek for "sword-ray"), which was a large, 4.5 to 5 m (15 to 20 feet) long predatory bony fish that lived in the Western Interior Sea, over what is now the middle of North America, during the Late Cretaceous. When alive, the fish would have resembled a gargantuan, fanged tarpon (to which it was, however, not related). Skeletal remains of Xiphactinus have come from Kansas, Alabama, and Georgia; Europe and Australia.