Antique Print of Arctic Skate or Gaimard’s Ray, Hand-Colored Lithograph, 1854

A skate seen from below, "La Raie de Gaimard," a hand-colored lithograph from the French scientific publication Voyage en Islande et au Groenland, published in Paris by Arthus Bertrand. The plate is headed "Zoologie" and numbered "Poissons Pl. 3" at the upper right. The old description gives it as 1845; the date field reads 1854.

The skate fills the upper part of the sheet, its broad diamond-shaped body drawn in olive and brown tones with fine radiating lines across the wings and a sharply pointed snout, and its long slender tail trailing to the lower left with small fins at the tip. The underside shows the mouth and gill slits and the pelvic fins, and a separate study at the lower right shows the plated teeth of the mouth, drawn in pale brown. The names of the artist Oudart and the engraver H. Blanchard appear in the lower margins.

The species is named for Joseph Paul Gaimard, the naval surgeon and naturalist who took part in French scientific voyages to the north in the 1830s.