Art played a pivotal role during the dawn of European natural history in the 16th and 17th centuries. Naturalists studied previously unknown and overlooked insects, animals, and other beestjes, or “little beasts.” And artists such as Joris Hoefnagel and Jan van Kessel helped deepen and spread knowledge of these creatures with highly detailed and playful works.

Experience the wonder of nature through the eyes of artists. Which little beast will you take home?

Meet the Little Beasts

Never content to rest on his well-earned laurels, Matisse kept pushing the development of his artwork even into his seventies when he turned to cut and pasted colored paper as his medium. It was both the aesthetic flourishing of his exploration of ever simplified shapes and flat planes of color as well as a means of diminishing the burdens of his infirmity and weakening eyesight.