File:SB-04-193-source-1.png

Summary

Description

The Whale and the Salamander. A whale swims at left in the rain while a seated salamander holds an umbrella beside flames; a crab is below the whale. The rain, whale, fins, crab, umbrella, salamander, flames, ground lines, complete printed frame and CHURCH signature match the scrapbook illustration. The source photograph shows the printed cutting mounted sideways in a museum album. A lossless 90-degree clockwise transpose places the scene in the same orientation as the scrapbook. The outer mounting-paper outline is excluded, while the inner printed picture frame and light source pencil marks are retained.

A printed cutting catalogued by Cooper Hewitt as 1878, illustrated by Frederick Stuart Church. The same composition is confirmed in G. Washington Æsop's Fables (New York: The World, 35 Park Row, 1878), printed p.47. The book title is dated 1878 and its copyright notice 1877. The catalogue status is Research in Progress; the catalogue date does not establish the first publication. The engraver is not securely identified here.

Compared directly with H. P. Blavatsky's Scrapbooks, volume 4, page 193, item 4. The scrapbook image, handwriting, notes and transcription remain a separate witness. This matching composition does not identify the physical copy used for the scrapbook cutting.

Source

Natural-colour photograph supplied by Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, accession 1938-57-1070-187, exact media CHSDM-57272_01-000001. Credit line: Bequest of Erskine Hewitt. Medium in the official record: Printed in black ink on paper.

• Museum object record.
• Persistent object identifier.
• Persistent identifier of this exact media view.
• Complete high-resolution museum photograph used for this crop.
• Matching Fables, 1878, printed p.47.

Thank you to Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum for preserving this material and freely providing its original photographs and Open Access metadata.

File and processing

PNG, 2264 × 1384 pixels, RGB. Original museum JPEG: 4581 × 5512 pixels, 13767181 bytes, SHA-256 86fcfc0e15c7dc808a8d91459c433790e15598559e3698c621425c2294eabefa.

Lossless 90-degree transpose clockwise to follow the scrapbook orientation, before cropping. Illustration crop in the upright image: (1760, 1190)–(4060, 2610). One bicubic alignment correction of 0.225246 degrees counterclockwise, measured from the long printed picture-frame bottom rule. Final trim (18, 18)–(2282, 1402); right and bottom bounds are exclusive. No added canvas is included. The complete relevant composition, inner printed frame, title or signature where present, and meaningful source marks are retained. The outer mounting-paper outline is excluded. Original paper colour, show-through and scan artefacts remain. No enlargement, colour or tonal correction, sharpening, retouching or reconstruction was applied. PNG compression is lossless; the source itself is JPEG. The complete source is linked above.

Rights

The saved official Smithsonian Open Access record, captured on 29 October 2026, specifies CC0 for this exact media view and its metadata. The underlying nineteenth-century printed illustration is public-domain historical material. The attribution, accession and credit line are retained above.