Heinrich Harder (1858-1935)
Heinrich Harder was born in 1858 and lived in the Northeast part of Germany, where he studied painting under Eugen Bracht. Living mainly as a painter and selling his landscapes, he also provided illustrations of animals for books. He took on some students around 1906. That same year Harder did a series of illustrations for the Naturalist Wilhelm Bolsche, who wrote a short history of the planet earth. The articles appeared in the weekly family magazine Die Gartenlaube. When the Berlin Zoo added an Aquarium in 1913, Harder was commissioned to paint murals of extinct creatures around the perimeter walls. He also created relief sculptures of some of the animals as well. The main entrance to the new Aquarium was adorned with a life sized Iquanodon sculpture by Harder. The Reichardt Cocoa company had been issuing a series of collector cards of prehistoric animals and Harder was recruited to illustrate two series of them, for a total of 60 illustrations. Wilhelm Bolsche wrote the description of the creatures for the back of the card. Harder also illustrated a book by Bolsche, Tierwanderungen in der Urwelt in 1915. Harder went on to become an art professor at the Berlin University.
Below are small versions of his paintings,
click on any one to view its larger version.
