King Mackerel Drawing

I guess I never gave it much though but before I saw this colorful fish drawing, I never considered how pretty a mackerel could be. In this case, it’s the Indo-Pacific king mackerel or Scomberomorus guttatus. Red-tipped fins, with shades of yellow and green and a number of spots make this fierce-looking fish (see them teeth?) quite beautiful. They can weigh up to 100 pounds and are considered a delicacy in India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

This piece was signed ff hennig. Unfortunately, there’s a professor in Germany with the same name and I wasn’t able to find anything about the artist with that name.  It is one of a number of colored book plates of fish from an 1801 book by Marcus Elieser Bloch (1723-1799). Based upon the dates involved it’s pretty safe to say that this king mackerel drawing is in the public domain everywhere.