You know, I’ve only done one Vintage Dinosaur Art project in the entire year of 2025? Granted, it was the mammoth, three part project on Marie Hubrecht at the Lyceum, the results of which are used in her biography, but still. It’s time to crank it up a notch, and the best way to pick up the pace is to scale back the size of the projects. Let’s do a cute children’s book. Dennis Nolan (1945-2022) was a painter in…
Bernard Robinson is an artist whose work I’ve always been happy to stumble upon, ever since I first reviewed the Ladybird book Dinosaurs back in 2011 (can you believe I’ve been writing this twaddle for over 15 years? Me neither). He was extremely skilled at placing tangible-looking, highly detailed and very scaly dinosaurs in lush, evocative settings, and both the quality of his work and its obviously retro nature (by post-Dino Renaissance standards) make it hugely nostalgic for many. Yes, even…
By popular request – and by that, I mean literally a single person asked for it – here’s another little look at Dinosaurs, published in 2000 as part of Kingfisher’s My First Encyclopedia series, although all of the content dates to 1994 (and it shows). As the last post featured a lot of work by Ann Winterbotham, it’s only fair that the work of the other illustrators gets an airing this time. Don’t say I don’t spoil you, Andrew McLeod. While…
Once again: Marie Hubrecht. Are you tired of me talking about Marie Hubrecht yet? Because I’m not done. If you want more Hubrecht, check out my reviews of Verdwenen Werelden here, here and here, and our Verdwenen Werelden podcast episode here! This post is a direct companion to my last one, in which I detail the time I went to see the spectacular murals she made in the 1920s at the former Girls’ Lyceum in Amsterdam. These paintings have been…
We’re back with more German dinosaur cards from the Reichardt cocoa company! In parts one and two, we discussed two series of 1900s illustrations by one F. John. In the late 1910s, Reichardt once again hit the market with collectible cards themed to extinct animals. Incidentally, after Series 1 and Series 2, the third series was numbered Series 1a, because that’s what makes the most sense. The original featured artist, F. John, was, not to put too fine a point…
A while ago we had a look at Extinct Monsters, a book from 1892 by H. N. Hutchinson and illustrated by Joseph Smit. Now, we’re going all the way to 1910 for the the new, revised, expanded edition of Extinct Monsters by the same author, that reflects almost two decades of scientific discovery. This new version of the book is the one that has the awesome extended title “…and Creatures of Other Days“. The ageing Joseph Smit, Dutchman in England,…
So here I am once more, in the playground of the finer arts. This is the 21st century, and we’re looking at one of the definitive dinosaur books of the year 2000, illustrated or rather painted by the talented Larry Felder. If you’ve seen part one, you’ll know Larry’s depictions of Triassic and Jurassic creatures was, gorgeous though they may have been, somewhat indebted to Walking With Dinosaurs. In the Cretaceous chapters of In The Presence of Dinosaurs, his work…
Brian Franczak was one of the best palaeoartists around in the early ’90s, and I still feel (as I did a couple of years ago) that we don’t feature his work here quite enough. Happily, then, an opportunity presents itself in the 30th anniversary of That Movie. You know the one: Unix systems, expensive ice cream, disappointingly flimsy road signs. All that stuff. I didn’t fancy writing yet another article praising that movie to the skies for how groundbreaking and…
Time for another round of How to Keep Dinosaurs, a book written by Robert Mash in 1983 that would prove very handy for anyone who might find themselves stuck in a James Gurney-esque fantasy world. For those who missed the first post, the 1983 edition features a series of really quite charming colour illustrations by Diz Wallis and Philip Hood, with monochrome cartoons provided by William Rushton. This is in contrast with the more common 2003 version, which just featured…
Hej allesammen! It’s hard to find proper illustrated mass-appeal dinosaur books from before the 1970s, when Zdeněk Burian brought Life Before Man into every European home. It’s always cause for minor celebration whenever something older than that shows up that isn’t Knight or Zallinger. So imagine my delight when I rediscovered this book in my very own archives when I moved house last year. Oh yes, I remember this one. This very, very old one. How old? It dates from…
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Chasmosaurus belli silhouette in custom bulleted list by Scott D. Sampson, Mark A. Loewen, Andrew A. Farke, Eric M. Roberts, Catherine A. Forster, Joshua A. Smith, and Alan L. Titus, CC BY-SA 3.0. Sourced from PhyloPic.