Wild / Tame - I

Anonymous Artist
Decorative Tile with art nouveau Fish Motif
ca. 1900
glazed earthenware
Museum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte, Dortmund

Anonymous Artist
Fish
ca. 1580
woodcut and letterpress
Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel

Anonymous Artist
Fish
ca. 1580
woodcut and letterpress
Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel

Anonymous Artist
Studies of Whale stranded in River Scheldt near Antorff
1577
hand-colored etching and engraving
Graphische Sammlung, Zentralbibliothek Zürich

Giovanni Andrea Maglioli
Sea Monster
1608
engraving
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

Giovanni Andrea Maglioli
Sea Monster
1608
engraving
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

Rudolf Junk
Menu Card
1905
color woodblock print
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Roger Reboussin
Two Frogs exploring a Crevice
1913
drawing
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Hans Thoma
Lizard
ca. 1905
drawing
(study for print illustration to the ABC Bilderbuch)
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Hans Thoma
Turtle
ca. 1905
drawing
(study for print illustration to the ABC Bilderbuch)
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Anonymous Artist
Pressmark of Gabriele Giolito de' Ferrari of Venice
ca. 1570
woodcut (phoenix)
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

Anonymous Artist
Dead Birds
18th century
design drawing
(ornamental motif for the Wiener Porzellanmanufaktur)
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

Louis Albert Schmidt
Still Life with Magpie
ca. 1875
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Pau

Édouard Traviès
Brazilian Hummingbirds
1857
lithograph
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

Julius Klinger
Hermanns & Froitzheim, Haberdasher
1910
lithograph (poster)
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Natalia Goncharova
Peacocks
1912
oil on canvas
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Such then I find to have been the state of things past, hard to be believed, though one produce proof for every particular thereof.  For men receive the report of things, though of their own country if done before their own time, all alike, from one as from another, without examination.  . . .  So impatient of labour are the most men in search of truth, and embrace the things that are next to hand. 

Now he that by the arguments here adduced shall frame a judgment of the things past and not believe rather that they were such as the poets have sung or prose-writers have composed, more delightfully to the ear than conformably to the truth, as being things not to be disproved and by length of time turned for the most part into the nature of fables without credit, but shall think them here searched out by the most evident signs that can be, and sufficiently too, considering their antiquity: he, I say, shall not err.  And though men always judge the present war where in they live to be greatest, and when it is past, admire more those that were before it, yet if they consider of this war by the acts done in the same, it will manifest itself to be greater than any of those before mentioned. 

. . .  But of the acts themselves done in the war, I thought not fit to write all that I heard from all authors nor such as I myself did but think to be true, but only those whereat I was myself present and those of which with all diligence I had made particular inquiry.  And yet even of those things it was hard to know the certainty, because such as were present at every action spake not all after the same manner, but as they were affected to the parts or as they could remember.  

To hear this history rehearsed, for that there be inserted in it no fables, shall be perhaps not delightful.  But he that desires to look into the truth of things done and which (according to the condition of humanity) may be done again, or at least their like, he shall find enough herein to make him think it profitable.  And it is compiled rather for an everlasting possession than to be rehearsed for a prize.  

– from The Peloponnesian War as written by Thucydides (5th century BC) and translated by Thomas Hobbes (1628) and edited by David Grene (1959)