Joseph Smit

Joseph Smit (18 July 1836 – 4 November 1929) was a Dutch zoological illustrator.

Background

Smit was born in Lisse.

He also did the lithography for his friend Joseph Wolf's Zoological Sketches, as well as Daniel Giraud Elliot's monographs on the Phasianidae and Paradisaeidae. Beginning in the 1870s, he worked on the Catalogue of the Birds in the British Museum (1874–1898, edited by Richard Bowdler Sharpe), and later on Lord Lilford's Coloured Figures of the Birds of the British Islands.

Smit contributed illustrations to John Gould's books on birds of different parts of the world, along with leading Victorian era wildlife artists including Wolf, Edward Lear, William Hart, Henry Constantine Richter and J.G. Keulemans. He also provided many of the illustrations of dinosaurs and other fossil creatures for the popular book Extinct Monsters (1892) by Henry Neville Hutchinson.

He died in his home on Cobden Hill, Radlett, Hertfordshire, United Kingdom on 4 November 1929 at age 93.

Works to which Joseph Smit contributed Exotic Ornithology Sclater & Salvin, 1869 Catalogue of the Birds in the British Museum The Ibis Monograph of the Phasianidae Elliot, 1872 A Monograph of the Paradiseidae Elliot, 1873 Jottings during the Cruise of the H.M.S. Curacoa Brenchley Survey of Western Palestine Tristram Zoological Sketches Wolf The Book of Antelopes Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London Transactions of the Zoological Society of London Coloured Figures of the Birds of the British Isles Lilford Extinct Monsters Hutchinson, 1892 Bulletin of the Liverpool Museums under the City Council