Ernst Haeckel

Yemen: Sokotra. View of the Island from the Arabian Sea. From the influential Art Noveau German biologist, philosopher and artist's voyage in 1875/6.

Ernst Haeckel, scientist, philosopher and artist, made a significant contribution to early evolutionary theory and was profoundly influential on the Fine and Decorative Arts of his time. Initially Haeckel trained as a physician and then studied comparative anatomy with an emphasis on sea organisms and embryology. His first work on sea life Die Radiolarien was received with great acclaim, particularly by Charles Darwin and he was subsequently offered a professorship in zoology.

In, in 1868 Haeckel published Natürliche Schopfungsgeschichte (The Natural History of Creation) asserting the central thesis of Darwin’s Origin of Species but in language more accessible to a wider audience and arguably more influential then Darwin’s rather technical Origin. Although he would become one of the greatest disseminators of Darwinism, he conversely argued evolution was progressive, asserted a Biogenetic Law (developmental stages of an embryo are a replay of that species' evolution) and incorporated the recapitulation theory of Jean-Babtiste Lamarck (traits acquired in a lifetime could be biologically inherited). He further argued that the origin of humans lay in Asia from the mythical lost continent of Lemuria, which continued as a legitimate argument to Darwin’s Africa theory until the 1990’s, and speculated that ‘missing links’ would be found to connect apes with humans decades before Eugene Dubois’s Java man was found.In 1876 Haeckel was commissioned to undertake the identification and illustration of the HMS Challenger expedition, which travelled more than 65,000 nautical miles and was the first such scientific survey of the oceans, cataloguing over 4000 unknown species and ultimately establishing oceanography as a science. Haeckel became an inexhaustible, controversial lecturer and author of science, philosophy and travel. He would name thousands of new species, establish terms such as stem cell, ecology (oecologia) and phylum and his illustrations would be reinterpreted by all areas of the fine and decorative arts to inform the style of the Art Noveau and inspire some of the great artists, designers and decorators of the Belle Epoque. Ultimately our modern view of life has its foundations in Haeckel’s understanding of the natural world and his holistic approach continues to be the framework adopted by emerging scientific fields whilst his extraordinary illustrations have never ceased to enliven all areas of the arts.