These beautiful watercolours come from the Austrian painter Aloys Zötl's Bestiarium, a series of exquisite paintings of various animals undertaken from 1831 through until his death in 1887. He was relatively unknown until, decades after his death, his work was "re-discovered" by surrealist André Breton who was taken by the surrealist aesthetic he saw present in the images - as he writes: "Lacking any biographical details about the artist, one can only indulge one's fantasies in imagining the reasons which might have induced this workman from Upper Austria, a dyer by profession, to undertake so zealously between 1832 and 1887 the elaboration of the most sumptuous bestiary ever seen." (Wikipedia)