Joseph Smit was a Dutch

Netherlands

The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

 zoological illustrator

Illustrator

An Illustrator is a narrative artist who specializes in enhancing writing by providing a visual representation that corresponds to the content of the associated text...

.

Background

Smit was born in Lisse

Lisse

Lisse is a town and municipality in the western Netherlands, in the province of South Holland. The municipality covers an area of 16.11 km² of which 0.41 km² is water. Its population is 21864...

. He received his first commission from Hermann Schlegel

Hermann Schlegel

Hermann Schlegel was a German ornithologist and herpetologist.-Early life and education:Schlegel was born at Altenburg, the son of a brassfounder. His father collected butterflies, which stimulated Schlegel's interest in natural history...

 at the Leiden Museum

Rijksmuseum van Natuurlijke Historie

The Rijksmuseum van Natuurlijke Historie was a museum in Leiden, The Netherlands. It was founded in 1820 by Royal Decree, formed from a merger of several existing collections. This happened at the instigation of Coenraad Jacob Temminck, who saw the museum primarily as a research institute...

 to work on the lithographs for a book on the birds of the Dutch East Indies. In 1866 he was invited to Britain

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 by Philip Sclater

Philip Sclater

Philip Lutley Sclater was an English lawyer and zoologist. In zoology, he was an expert ornithologist, and identified the main zoogeographic regions of the world...

 to do the lithography for Sclater's Exotic Ornithology. He also did the lithography for Joseph Wolf

Joseph Wolf

Joseph Wolf was a German artist who specialized in natural history illustration. He moved to the British Museum in 1848 and became the choice of illustrator for numerous explorers and collectors. He depicted animals accurately in life-like postures and has been considered one of the great pioneers...

's Zoological Sketches, as well as Daniel Giraud Elliot

Daniel Giraud Elliot

Daniel Giraud Elliot was an American zoologist.Elliot was one of the founders of the American Museum of Natural History in New York and the American Ornithologists' Union. He was also curator of zoology at the Field Museum in Chicago.Elliot used his wealth to publish a series of sumptuous...

's monographs on the Phasianeidae and Paradiseida. Beginning in the 1870s, he worked on the Catalogue of the Birds in the British Museum (1874–1898, edited by Richard Bowdler Sharpe

Richard Bowdler Sharpe

Richard Bowdler Sharpe was an English zoologist.-Biography:Sharpe was born in London and studied at Brighton College, The King's School, Peterborough and Loughborough Grammar School. At the age of sixteen he went to work for Smith & Sons in London...

), and later on Lord Lilford

Thomas Littleton Powys, 4th Baron Lilford

Thomas Littleton Powys, 4th Baron Lilford , was a British aristocrat and ornithologist.Lilford was the eldest son of Thomas Powys, 3rd Baron Lilford, and Hon. Mary Elizabeth Fox, daughter of Henry Vassall-Fox, 3rd Baron Holland. He succeeded his father as fourth Baron in 1861...

's Coloured Figures of the Birds of the British Islands.

His son Pierre Jacques Smit (1863–1960) was also a zoological illustrator.

External links

• Illustrations from Smit in The Ibis.