ABSTRACT
This chapter examines an as yet unknown Chinese album, Pictures of Sea Fish (Haiyu tu) in the collection of the Asian Art Museum in Berlin. It depicts more than 130 species of sea fish. It is a world away from the traditional artistic representation of fish and has more in common with objective scientific investigation of natural history. This article serves as fundamental research of the album. It examines this newly discovered album and subsequently situates it in the different contexts of nature studies and visual culture in early modern China. As the first research on this album, the article sheds light on the role of scientific illustrations within the formation of knowledge of the natural environment in China in the eighteenth century.
