Albany's Historic Whaling Station > Records

PAINTING - (a) Steller's Sea Cow (b) Amazonian Manatee

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Richard Ellis

c. 1975

Subcollections

Overview

2 paintings in single framed work (a) Steller's Sea Cow - mottled grey dugong-like, with coarse, bark textured skin, distinctive snout and stump-like front forearm/flippers (104.) (b) Amazonian Manatee - large, cylindrical dugong-like animal, grey with white patch on chest , flattened snout with bristled upper lip, and flat, rounded fluke (105.); gouache on blue card, framed and mounted with inscription

Historical information

Collection of 106 of paintings by Richard Ellis that were selected by the Smithsonian Institution to form a traveling exhibit of the marine mammals of the world. The collection was purchased by Perth businessman Kevin Parry in 1985 and donated to Whale World, now known as Albany's Historic Whaling Station.

Details

Registration number

cwa-org-128-RE1999.314a,b

Item type

Themes

Material

Width

430 mm

Height or length

880 mm

Depth

15 mm

Inscriptions and markings

STELLER'S SEA COW (Hydrodamilis gigas)

A relative of the dugong and the manatee, this huge and ungainly sirenian is now extinct. It was discovered by Georg Steller, the naturalist abord Captain Vitus Bering's expedition to the North Pacific in 1742. By 1769 it was completely eliminated, killed off for food and leather by Russian sealers. It probably reached a length of 30 feet, and may have weighed as much as 4 tons. Its skin was dark and wrinkled, and its forelimbs were substantially reduced in size. It was reported to feed on seaweed, which it crushed between bony plates in its otherwise toothless jaws. There is some speculation that it was too buoyant to dive.
104.

AMAZONIAN MANATEE (Trichechus inunuis)

Found only in the Amazon River and its tributaries, this species differs from its more northerly relative in the absence of nails on its elongated flippers, and a somewhat smaller size. A male named
Butterball has been on exhibit at the Steinhart Aquarium in San Francisco since 1967. A third species of manatee is found off the coast of West Africa, Trichechus senegalensis.
105.

Verso Smithsonian label checklist # 104, 105 Packing case # 2), AWHS accession number

Contextual information

The paintings represent a body of work by well-known American marine conservationist, author, artist and natural historian Richard Ellis (1938-2024).

Keywords

Richard Ellis

Albany's Historic Whaling Station

Smithsonian Institution

Marine Mammals

Place made

United States

Year

c. 1975