An Acarauna
This conversation is connected to An Acarauna.
A queen angelfish rendered in hand-colored engraving, its body a deep olive-green with rows of dark-edged scales, the fins and tail tipped in red-orange. The fish is shown in profile, filling the page, its eye bright yellow, its mouth slightly open. The plate is captioned "An Acarauna &c." at the bottom. Catesby was an English naturalist who spent years in the American colonies and the Caribbean, and his Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands (1729–1747) was the first published account of the flora and fauna of North America. He drew, engraved, and hand-colored the plates himself, learning etching specifically for the project. The fish illustrations have a directness and personality that later, more technically polished natural history plates often lack.