Gustav Friedrich Schlick

Laid down. Overall in excellent condition. Tiny loss to medium in the upper right corner and a tiny brown stain in the lower left corner. Otherwise colours strong and vibrant. Sold framed.
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Schlick trained in Leipzig under Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, and thereafter worked in Berlin and Paris.  Otherwise, relatively little is known about him, and other than an atmospheric depiction of an artist's studio, in the Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, few of his drawings have been identified.¹  This dream-like watercolour seems reminiscent of the fantastical natural history drawings of Schlick's Austrian comtemporary Aloys Zötl (1803-1887), which were later greatly admired by the Surrealist André Breton.

The numerous species of marine life depicted here, which have been identified by Klaas Post of the Natuurhistorisch Museum, Rotterdam, all originate from the English Channel and the nearby North Atlantic.  At top left is a moonfish (Mola mola), a male (blue) cuckoo wrasse (Labrus bimaculatus) and its female (red) companion, with a lumpfish (Cyclopterus lumpus) in between.  Among the shells are a scallop, a dog whelk (Nicella lapillus) at the far right, a common cockle (Cerastoderma edule) at the bottom left, and three flat oysters (Ostrea edulis).  Jellyfish, slugs, a crab, a sea urchin, two common sunstars (Crossaster papposus) and a heart urchin (Spatangoida) also make an appearance, drifting among bladderwrack seaweed (Fucus vesiculosus).

^1. Inv. no. 1871.1044; T. Dacosta Kaufmann, Central European drawings in the collection of the Crocker Art Museum, Turnhout/Sacramento 2004, p. 294