‘The Blue Cyanaea’
Date
1863
Creator
After
Philip Henry Gosse (1810 - 1888, British) , Illustrator
Object type
Material
Technique
Dimensions
height (print): 208mm
width (print): 135mm
width (print): 135mm
Subject
Content object
Description
Underwater scene showing the Blue jellyfish Cyanea lamarckii a pelagic ocean dweller from around the coasts of the British Isles.
Plate accompanying the paper ‘The blue cyanaea’, by Philip Henry Gosse, The Intellectual Observer, October 1863, pp.149-157. Inscribed below: ‘The Blue Cyanaea. P.H. Gosse del.’
The accompanying text states that: ‘The specimen whose portrait accompanies this little memoir lived for two or three days only, in a glass vase of sea-water…A very gorgeous object was the Cyanaea in captivity. The whole umbrella was of a fine rich blue, possessing a sapphirine brilliance and transparency, especially when the slanting rays of the setting sun shone horizontally through the mass, as it floated in its glass prison on our drawing-room table…’
Philip Henry Gosse (1810-1888) was a populariser of marine biology and an aquarium inventor. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1856.
Plate accompanying the paper ‘The blue cyanaea’, by Philip Henry Gosse, The Intellectual Observer, October 1863, pp.149-157. Inscribed below: ‘The Blue Cyanaea. P.H. Gosse del.’
The accompanying text states that: ‘The specimen whose portrait accompanies this little memoir lived for two or three days only, in a glass vase of sea-water…A very gorgeous object was the Cyanaea in captivity. The whole umbrella was of a fine rich blue, possessing a sapphirine brilliance and transparency, especially when the slanting rays of the setting sun shone horizontally through the mass, as it floated in its glass prison on our drawing-room table…’
Philip Henry Gosse (1810-1888) was a populariser of marine biology and an aquarium inventor. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1856.
Associated place