THE OLD MASTERS

The print is the point

Anyone can sell the image — it’s public domain. What you’re buying here is the object: how faithfully, and how durably, the masterwork lands on your wall.

Museum-grade cotton-rag
Heavyweight archival cotton-rag stock — the same acid-free paper conservators trust — not thin poster stock.
Archival pigment, 100+ years
Pigment inks, not dye: rated to hold their colour past a century without fading or shifting.
Colour-managed to the source
Each file is profiled to the holding institution’s own scan, so the print reads as the painting does.
Gallery canvas on solid wood
Canvas is gallery-wrapped over kiln-dried solid-wood stretcher bars — taut, square, ready to hang.
← Natural History

Hummingbirds

Trochilidae — iridescence, catalogued.

Work
Ernst Haeckel, Trochilidae, from Kunstformen der Natur
Artist / creator
Ernst Haeckel (German, 1834–1919)
Origin & date
Kunstformen der Natur, 1899–1904
Held by
Kunstformen der Natur (plate 99)

Format

The full-resolution color-managed file — yours to print, study, and keep.

Sized to protect print quality — this scan's resolution supports sizes up to 12x16 cleanly.

Size

$24.00

The story

Hummingbirds arranged around the plate in a spray of hovering bodies and absurd tails — racket-tips, streamers, forked plumes — each species rendered with its gorget catching the light in green, violet and flame. Haeckel gives them a dark ground so the iridescence reads, and lets the long tails do the composition, curving into the corners like calligraphy. The discipline is real taxonomy; the arrangement is pure design. It is the clearest statement of his lifelong claim: that the forms evolution arrives at are not merely functional but, by any honest measure, beautiful. A jewel case of a page.

About this reproduction

  • Faithful reproduction of a public-domain work, sourced from Kunstformen der Natur (plate 99)’s open-access release.
  • Printed to order on archival cotton-rag stock, pigment inks rated 100+ years.
  • Color-managed to the source scan.
  • Every factual claim about this work — title, artist, date, and holding institution — is verified against the art-historical record and the source institution.
  • Ships in 5–8 business days; satisfaction guaranteed.

Complete the set

From Natural History