Johann Baptist Zwecker


Johann Baptist Zwecker was a German illustrator of books and magazines.

Life and work

Zwecker studied art in Düsseldorf and Frankfurt, Germany. Around 1860 he set up a studio in London with Joseph Wolf.
He illustrated children's books including Hans Christian Andersen's The Ice-Maiden, as well as tales of adventure such as African Hunting and Adventure... by William Charles Baldwin. He also worked for magazines. He is however best known for his artwork for natural history books including Alfred Russel Wallace's The Geographical Distribution of Animals. His greatest work was to illustrate John George Wood's Popular Natural History in three volumes.
Among his works are The Hartebeest, 1862; Arrival at the Depôt at Cooper's Creek, 1862; Ostrich Hunting, 1862; and A Race for Life in a Jungle, 1862. He produced the first surviving image of the Icelandic Fjallkonan.

Works illustrated by Zwecker

", a symbol of Iceland, frontispiece to Jón Árnason's Icelandic Legends, 1866