"This illustrated book is the first to explore Darwin's links with artistic traditions and his impact on the visual arts in Europe and America in the nineteenth century. Bringing together art and science in a completely original way, it sets works by major artists such as Church, Landseer, Heade, Redon, Cezanne and Monet in a fresh and illuminating context. In grand landscape painting and dioramas, in imaginary scenes of prehistory and early human life, in depictions of exotic birds and of life in the wild, Darwin's sense of the interplay of all living things and of the beauties of colour and form in nature proved vital."--Jacket.