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Fish have been the subject of works of art for at least 14000 years and appeared in ‘primitive’ art from many cultures. In ancient civilizations of the West, fishes were a constant, if infrequent, motif. Fish designs in ancient Egypt were common and showed little change for 1500 years. Decorative fish designs of the Greeks and Romans (often with mythological significance) were adopted by early Christians as religious symbols. With the development of printing, the non-religious depiction of fish became more widespread and realistic paintings of fish, especially still lifes, appeared during the Renaissance. This still life tradition reached a peak in 17th century Netherlands. After 1750, fish images appeared in many different contexts. Realistic painters showed the agony of newly-caught fish, dramatic marine scenes with fish, and occasionally freshwater fishes in their habitats. In the twentieth century, fish were painted by many modern artists, including Matisse, Picasso, Klee, Masson, Beckman, Soutine, Magritte, and Thiebaud. Some of these artists' fish images are pleasing, others are violent or ambiguously symbolic. In contrast, contemporary nature artists tend to paint live fish in idealized settings, a style with roots in 17th century still lifes and oriental brush paintings. In Japan and China, fish have been an important theme in art and their use has been highly symbolic. A survey of fish images in art shows that artists, like scientists, create mainly in the context of historical precedents.

Netsuke are tiny carvings from Japan that were originally tied on to the end of a cord attached to a pouch, so the pouch could hang from the belt of a kimono. They evolved into a distinctive art form: exquisite carvings made from ivory, boxwood, and a wide variety of other materials, valued for their own sake. The subjects of netsuke carvings are as varied as Japanese art itself, but animals are a favorite subject, often in whimsical poses. Netsuke usually have meaning beyond the subject, representing traditional legends, stories, or symbols. The fish shown here is a carp, a common subject of netsuke because of its pleasing shape and symbolism of success or wealth. Carp are particularly conspicuous as a symbol in Japan on May 5 (Boy’s Day), when families having sons fly carp banners over their rooftops, ‘in hope the boys will grow up to be as strong and perseverant as the carp... (Symmes 1990, p. 178)’.

The Story Joan Told was inspired by Karla Holland-Scholer’s teacher, Joan Brown, a professor of art at the University of California at Berkeley. In this small ceramic sculpture a women in a wet suit sits in a chair, holding a large fish on her lap. Such fish were a personal symbol for Brown, who was a competitive swimmer as well as an artist. She swam from Alcatraz Island to San Francisco and made several paintings based on this event. This sculpture honors Brown’s achievements and includes many of the symbols Brown liked to use in her own paintings -the fish, cat, and Alcatraz Island. Brown died in India in 1990, but her legacy to her students is still very much alive She encouraged her students to make art based on stories, dreams, myths, and folktales. Holland-Scholer is an artist and teacher who lives in Davis, California.

Joan Brown (1938–1990) was a professor of art at the University of California at Berkeley. A student of San Francisco Bay area artists Elmer Bischoff and David Park, at age 22 she was the youngest artist in the prestigious Whitney Annual (New York) of 1960. Eve with Fish and Snake is from a series created in 1970 called Paradise Series # 1. Brown’s use of bright color and symbolic figurative imagery documents important moments in her life. In her paintings she celebrated birthdays and her passion for animals. Fish appear to be a personal symbol, reflecting in part her love of swimming and her attempts to swim from Alcatraz Island to San Francisco (she was successful in 1975). Her paintings may appear to be ‘naive’ to some viewers, but Brown was completely aware of what she was doing. During the 1980s Brown devoted much of her energy to public sculptures. She died tragically in 1990 while installing a colorful tiled obelisk at the Eternal Heritage Museum in Prasanthinalayam, India (Adams 1992).

This lamp is an example of the shaded art glass labelled ‘Burmese’, one of many popular art glass wares of the late nineteenth century. Burmese ware shades from a delicate lemon-yellow at the base to a peach or dusty pink at the top. The color effect was achieved by the addition of chemicals to the glass batch: uranium oxide produced the basic yellow glass and gold produced the pink when the cooled piece was refired. Burmese ware was patented by Frederick S. Shirley of the Mount Washington Glass Company of New Bedford, Massachusetts, in 1885 and was manufactured until about 1895 (Wilson 1972). Burmese ware, expensive for its day, was made in many decorative, yet functional, forms (more than 250 according to a price list) and was frequently embellished with applied decorations or hand-painted enamel designs, as seen on this lamp, with its uncommon bass-like ‘fish-in-the-net’ motif. Why this glass was named Burmese is not known.

This painting by contemporary artist Robert Friedli was used as an illustration in a popular book on cutthroat trout (Trotter 1987). It demonstrates how much the boundaries between fine art and illustration have become blurred. On one hand, it is clearly not a scientific illustration. The colors are accurate because Friedli bases his paintings on photographs of trout he has caught himself, but features important to taxonomists, such as scale rows and fin rays, are painted with considerable liberty. On the other hand, modern paintings of this nature would rarely be found in a museum devoted to fine arts, even though an equivalent painting from sixteenth century Holland (a still life with fish) would be prominently displayed. Yet Friedli’s watercolor paintings on paper are quite different from standard trout-leaping-out-of the-water paintings, usually painted with cold realism, that are so popular with anglers today. His style is clearly based on Japanese brush paintings, where a few brush strokes and white spaces tell the viewer as much about the environment of the fish as more detailed paintings of other artists. However, the trout also dominates the painting much more than is typical of traditional Japanese brush paintings (with the notable exception of Nakajima Raisho, 1796-1871, whose scrolls of fish are highly prized). Freiedli, Professor of Computers and Technology at Boise State University, Idaho, is clearly painting for an increasingly sophisticated audience of fly fishermen. Such anglers presumably appreciate his ability to catch the essence of a wild trout in an unsentimental way. The paintings deserve a wider audience. Lahontan cutthroat is used with permission of the artist and of Patrick C. Trotter.

Gustave Courbet (1819-1877) was a Realist painter whose paintings were a rebellion against the Romantic painters who dominated the art of his day. His paintings of common people and common scenes shocked the 19th century French art world. The photograph below of The Trout does not do justice to Courbet’s excellence as a craftsman and a colorist but does reflect his uncompromising realism. The trout is painted as a terrorized victim of fate; it is difficult not to feel the pain of this fish as it struggles against the hook in its mouth. By painting reality in its unglamorous aspects, Courbet instigated the first of many artistic ‘revolutions’ which led to the chaotic modern art scene. The realist tradition he began continues today in such exhibits as that of the photographs of homosexual acts by Robert Mapplethorpe, which are as offensive to our society today as paintings like The Trout were to the society of Courbet’s time.

Gifford R. Beal (1879-1956) was a minor but popular artist whose art is transitional between the realistic art favored in 19th Century America and the abstract art of the 1940’s and 1950’s. He studied with William M. Chase who was famous for his lustrous paintings of fish as ‘common objects’. Beal frequently chose as his subjects common people engaged in activities such as commercial fishing or tending circus animals. He had the good fortune to be related by marriage to Duncan Phillips who established the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C. and collected Beal’s paintings.

Raphael (1483-1520) was the guiding genius of art in the High Renaissance period of Italy. His contemporaries included Leonardo, Bramante, Michelangelo, Giorgione, and Titian. Belief in their divinely-inspired genius caused the Renaissance artists to attempt artistic projects that were so ambitious they were almost impossible. Complex technical systems for foreshortening and perspective were developed to revive classical attitudes toward ideal physical beauty. The Miraculous Draught of Fishes is an example of Raphael’s technique. It is a huge (3.6 x 4 m), meticulously crafted painting in luminous color, created in 1515 and 1516. The painting shows Christ convincing two fishermen to become his disciples by causing their nets to be miraculously filled with fish (Luke 5: l-11). The dramatic action takes place in a natural setting, but the idealized, human figures are clearly the focus of the painting, reflecting the Renaissance view that the Earth was made for man. However, compared to earlier paintings of this scene by other artists, the attention paid to details of the natural world is impressive. The fish are realistic renditions of common Mediterranean fishes, not just religious symbols.

These quotes by Andre Masson (X396-1987), one of the leading members of the Surrealist movement of the 1920’s, provide insight into Battle ofFishes and into the technique of automatic writing upon which Surrealism was founded. Masson started as a traditional painter of still lifes and landscapes but changed his style after he made friends in Paris with surrealists such as Andre Breton, Giorgio de Chirico and Max Ernst. Masson developed his own style of abstract calligraphy that expressed the violence he had experienced in World War I. Battle of Fishes is one of his most effective experiments using tube pigments and sand randomly poured over areas of spilled glue to enhance the impact of his violent fish imagery.