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Known the world over as the author of "The Owl and the Pussycat" and other "nonsense poems" for children, Edward Lear (1812-1888) was also an extraordinarily accomplished natural history painter, ranked by many contemporaries – and subsequent art historians – as an artist on a par with John James Audubon.

In the decade of the 1830s, Lear was the unofficial artist in residence at the London Zoo, illustrating dozens of natural history publications for others as well as his own spectacular monograph on parrots, Illustrations of the Family of Psittacidae or Parrots (1832).

Just as he was achieving an international reputation for his scientific illustration, Lear abruptly terminated this part of his career in order to devote himself full-time to landscape painting and travel.

However, his scientific illustrations endure.  The Blacker-Wood Natural History Collection has copies of most of the books that Edward Lear illustrated.  The holdings also include some fifty sketches and drawing.

This exhibition has been curated by Richard Virr with the text of many of the captions provided by Robert McCracken Peck, Curator of Art and Artifacts at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University.

Free admission. Opening hours: /library/branches/hssl