An annotated catalogue of the marine biological paintings of Thomas Alan Stephenson (1898–1961)

Abstract

Thomas Alan Stephenson (1898–1961) was a greatly gifted marine biologist and artist. The British sea anemones (1928, 1935) and his essay on beauty in nature and art, Seashore life and pattern (1944), both of which he illustrated himself, are his best-known works. A participant with his wife Anne in the Great Barrier Reef Expedition of 1928–1929, the couple subsequently travelled world-wide studying rocky-shore zonation patterns, summarized eleven years after Stephenson's death in Life between tidemarks on rocky shores (1972). During those travels Stephenson painted marine organisms (mostly invertebrates and algae) and shorescapes, many of which were reproduced in books and scientific papers. His paintings represent a valuable artistic and scientific resource of international significance that deserves to be better known. Some are listed in the catalogues prepared for a memorial exhibition in 1964. Others were discovered from letters between Stephenson and museum curators, and yet more were identified from further diverse sources. Catalogued here are 99 paintings on various marine themes in watercolour, gouache or oil, of which 55 are known in institutional collections or in private hands; the rest could not be traced. Yet more marine biological artworks probably remain undocumented.