Of the Less Erroneous Pictures of Whales, and the True Pictures of Whaling Scenes — Moby-Dick

After the parade of false whale portraits, Ishmael hunts pictures that are merely less wrong. He passes the traveller monstrosities in Pliny and Cuvier because his quarrel is with the eye, not with legend. Beale wins among published sperm-whale outlines, Huggins beats Colnett, and Ross Browne's shapes are fair while the engravings fail. Scoresby's Right-whale profiles earn respect yet sit too small on the page, and he offers only one whaling scene where Ishmael wanted many. Without a hunt on the canvas, you never see the living whale as the living hunters see him.

Garnery supplies what the outlines miss. In one French plate a sperm whale rises under a stoven boat while an oarsman leaps through the boiling spout as frightened heads scatter and the ship races through storm. In another, hunters ride beside a running Right whale in foaming commotion while behind them the sea lies becalmed and a dead leviathan floats like a conquered fort with a capture flag in its spout-hole. Ishmael bets the painter knew whalers or learned from one. English and American draughtsmen, by contrast, keep handing you vacant profiles as lively as the side of a pyramid, and even Scoresby fills pages with boat hooks and magnified snow crystals when Ishmael wanted bodies in peril.

Garnery's anatomy may fault, yet Ishmael admits he could not draw half so well. Motion beats outline every time. When your safety material finally shows the work in movement, will you still sign off on the diagram that keeps the danger off the page?