Joseph Smit (18 July 1836 – 4 November 1929) was a Dutch zoologicalillustrator.[1][2]
Smit was born inLisse.[2] He received his first commission fromHermann Schlegel at theLeiden Museum to work on the lithographs for a book on the birds of the Dutch East Indies. In 1866 he was invited toBritain byPhilip Sclater to do the lithography for Sclater'sExotic Ornithology; he prepared a hundred images for the book.[3]
He also did the lithography for his friend[4]Joseph Wolf'sZoological Sketches, as well asDaniel Giraud Elliot's monographs on thePhasianidae andParadisaeidae. Beginning in the 1870s, he worked on theCatalogue of the Birds in the British Museum (1874–1898, edited byRichard Bowdler Sharpe), and later onLord Lilford'sColoured Figures of the Birds of the British Islands.
Smit contributed illustrations toJohn Gould's books on birds of different parts of the world, along with leadingVictorian era wildlife artists including Wolf,Edward Lear,William Hart,Henry Constantine Richter andJ.G. Keulemans.[5] He also provided many of the illustrations of dinosaurs and other fossil creatures for the popular bookExtinct Monsters (1892) byHenry Neville Hutchinson.
He died in his home on Cobden Hill,Radlett,Hertfordshire, United Kingdom on 4 November 1929 at age 93.[2]
His sonPierre Jacques Smit (born October 1863 at Leiderdorp – 1960), who used the name Peter Smit, was also a zoological illustrator.[6]
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