Eugen von Ransonnet-Villez Underwater

Found on the admirable Public Domain Review

Eugen von Ransonnet-Villez (1838–1926) was an Austrian diplomat, artist, naturalist, lithographer, and explorer—and one of the great forgotten pioneers of underwater art. He is generally credited as the first known artist to make sustained, direct observational drawings of underwater landscapes while actually submerged.

His most famous book is Sketches of the Inhabitants, Animal Life and Vegetation in the Lowlands and High Mountains of Ceylon: As Well as of the Submarine Scenery near the Coast, Taken from a Diving Bell
Vienna, 1867.

Sketches of the inhabitants, animal life and vegetation in the lowlands and high mountains of Ceylon,

or at Biodiversity Library

According to Melissa McCarthy at the Public Domain Review:“What makes him extraordinary is that in 1864–65, while in Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, he used a specially built diving bell to sit underwater and draw coral reefs directly from observation. The bell was roughly three feet high, had thick glass, ballast provided by cannonballs, and an air supply from the surface; he reportedly worked for sessions of up to about three hours. He drew with soft pencil on specially prepared greenish varnished paper, then sent completed sheets upward in a tin box. The sketches were later developed into more finished works and reproduced as color lithographs.“