Albrecht Dürer, Rhinoceros, woodcut printed with an olive green tone block, 1515, printed after 1620 © The Trustees of the British Museum

HULL.- This touring exhibition explores our enduring curiosity about the animal world through the beautiful and bizarre imagery found in prints of the 15th to the early 19th centuries in the British Museum’s collection.  The exhibition features prints by well-known artists including Albrecht Dürer, Francisco de Goya and George Stubbs, alongside lesser known and rarely seen treasures.  

These small-scale, easily transported and comparatively affordable prints were accessible to many levels of society and are a fascinating record of early modern imagination and creativity.

The exhibition has three main themes:

Allegorical animals: symbolism and story which explores the symbolic significance of creatures and the moral stories that they were used to tell.  These are illustrated in religious prints depicting popular biblical stories such as the temptation in the Garden of Eden and Jonah and the Whale, and other narrative subjects including classical mythology and fables, proverbs and allegories, political satire and popular beliefs.

Observing animals: natural history studies charts how prints of all kinds of animals, including newly discovered species, played a vital role in the dissemination of information around the world.  These observational works provide us with a fascinating insight into the ways that artists contributed to natural historical knowledge, and show how artists used a range of techniques, including copying the observations (and mistakes) of others, to create ‘naturalistic’ images of animals.  

Encountering animals: the intimate and the everyday shows how animals formed an integral part of life in the early modern period through farming and entertainments such as bull-baiting, in noisy, messy and sometimes violent encounters.  Exotic creatures also entered everyday life as fashionable accessories and in menagerie exhibits, and were satirized and documented for posterity in turn by printmakers.

The exhibition runs until 26 August and includes works created through a variety of different printmaking processes including engraving, woodcut, mezzotint, etching and drypoint. 

For the Hull showing of Curious Beasts the curators from Hull Museums have selected a number of animal specimens from the natural history, social history and art collection to complement the British Museums’ prints.  This includes a large ‘Hull Cabinet of Curiosities’ containing a large brown taxidermy bear, an elephant foot, a giraffe skull and a flying fish!

The exhibition is accompanied by a gift book Curious Beasts: Animal Prints from the British Museum by Alison E. Wright, available in the gallery shop for £9.99.

Simon Green, Assistant City Manager - Sports, Leisure & Heritage said: “We expect Curious Beasts on loan from the British Museum to be a busy summer exhibition and we encourage visitors to make the most of this fantastic opportunity to see these awe-inspiring works for free at first hand.  We have planned a programme of special events for adults and families which we hope will help them to get the most from the exhibition”. 

Frederick Hendrik Van Hove, The famous Porcupine, engraving, second half of the 17th century © The Trustees of the British Museum

Nicolaus Mettel, 'Head of a shark', etching, 1770s © The Trustees of the British Museum

Albrecht Dürer (1471 – 1528), The monstrous pig of Landser, Engraving, c. 1496.  © The Trustees of the British Museum

William Dent, The Return to the Political Ark, hand-coloured etching, 1790 © The Trustees of the British Museum

William Heath, The Camelopard, or a new hobby, hand-coloured etching,1827 © The Trustees of the British Museum

John Murphy after James Northcote, A Tiger, print, 1790 © The Trustees of the British Museum

Hieronymus Wierix after Marten de Vos, Jonah cast into the sea, engraving, 1585 © The Trustees of the British Museum

Giovanni Battista Palumba, Diana bathing with her attendants transforming Actaeon into a stag, c. 1500 © Trustees of the British Museum

John Evans, The world turned upside-down or the folly of man, etching, c. 1793-1800 © Trustees of the British Museum